


Sometimes, You Just Have to Accept That Your Personal Timeline is A Pretzel

by Silvex



Series: Easily My Most Self-Indulgent AU Yet [3]
Category: Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth
Genre: Gen, Meeting your Past self, Nanako knows about magic, Persona 5 Protagonist is from Inaba, Repressed Memories, Some DLC is present, Teddie is a Child, Time Travel, and regretting your life choices
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 25,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28984809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvex/pseuds/Silvex
Summary: Yosuke has no idea what's going on. There's a bunch of kids around, his only two friends have superpowers- and calling Yukiko a friend would probably be pushing it some days- and this very definitely isn't his school. He doesn't know what he did to deserve this, or how to handle things, but at least there's people around that he can talk to.Zen and Rei don't remember anything before waking up at Yasogami High. Their memories are tied to a set of Labyrinths. They want them back.In 2009, there was a typhoon. Ken doesn't remember a lot of what happened back then, but he's starting to think it was a lot more important than he realized.
Relationships: Amada Ken & Aragaki Shinjiro, Elizabeth & Theodore & Lavenza, Lavenza & Marie
Series: Easily My Most Self-Indulgent AU Yet [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1961047
Comments: 69
Kudos: 98





	1. In Which Yosuke Meets Some New People

The best way for Yosuke to sum up the Yasogami High Culture Festival was this: He was not having a very good time right now.

In hindsight, suggesting the Group Date Cafe had been a terrible idea with absolutely no chance of going right if it was selected. And of course it was selected, because country kids had no real sources of entertainment. And they all knew it was him, because he’d made the mistake of admitting to it out loud. Like he needed to be any more of a social pariah.

He also thought he might have been going crazy, given the bell he’d heard that morning and nobody else did, but it wasn’t like he’d expected otherwise. There just wasn’t anything to do.

“And this is our classroom,” He heard Yukiko say. He glanced up, and saw her, Chie, a trio of first years- including both the local delinquent and, for some reason, Risette- a little girl with pigtails, and three kids who seemed to still be in middle school. One of the kids had brown hair, another had black hair and glasses, and the third had both golden hair and the most piercing blue eyes Yosuke had ever seen.

The boy with black hair glanced at the sign. “It says… Group Date Cafe. ...What’s a Group Date Cafe?”

“Torture,” The boy with brown hair replied. Everyone looked at him quizzically. “...What?”

Yukiko bit her lip. “Ken-kun… have you ever been to a Group Date Cafe before?”

“I… don’t think so?” The kid sounded genuinely confused by this. Yosuke couldn’t help but wonder why. “I mean, if I did, I don’t remember it…”

“Maybe one of his senpai told him something?” Chie suggested. “I mean, maybe they’ve gone to a Group Date Cafe before.”

The boy shook his head. “Akihiko-san and Shinjiro-san would die of awkwardness before they could even get there, Minato-san would be stabbed by the end of it, Fuuka-san’s in a long-distance relationship, Junpei-san wouldn’t have gone to one at least since meeting Chidori-san, Aigis-san wouldn’t go without Minato-san or Kotone-san, Yukari-san and Kotone-san don’t tell me about romantic stuff, and I think that, if Mitsuru-san went on a group date, we’d be learning about it through tabloids.”

That was a very long list, and Yosuke knew exactly none of those names or how they related to each other. “Um…”

Apparently, speaking up was the wrong decision, as that was what allowed everyone to register his presence. “...Oh, Yosuke-kun.” Yukiko didn’t sound like she was utterly disdainful of his existence, so that was probably a good thing. “You’ve met Kanji-kun, right? We’re showing his brother and his friends around the school right now.”

Yosuke had met Kanji before, at the most awkward camping trip he’d ever been on. They’d shared a tent, and mostly been uncomfortable the whole night. “I… didn’t know he had a brother.”

“Hi!” The boy with bright blue eyes piped up, said eyes sparkling like little stars. “I’m Teddie! And these are Kenny, Renren, and Nana-chan.”

“...I’m Amada Ken, and this is my cousin Dojima Nanako, and that’s Amamiya Ren,” The boy with brown hair sighed. “And... that’s Tatsumi Kuma, but... yeah, we all just call him Teddie.”

This introduction was not making things any less weird. “It’s… nice to meet you? I’m Hanamura Yosuke.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Yosuke!” The little girl- Nanako- stated with a wide grin on her face. She was adorable. “So… you’re in the same class as Big Bro’s friends?”

“Y-yeah, I guess…” If Ken really was friends with Chie and Yukiko. If he hadn’t dozed off at some point in the past day, and this wasn’t just a really weird fever dream. If any of this was actually happening.

There was a flicker of movement on the corner of his vision, and he jumped at the chance to change the subject. “Hey, is that a spider over there?”

“A- a spider!? Where!?” Chie looked like she was on the verge of jumping on one of the desks. Which would have been interesting, but it probably wouldn’t be good for the desk.

“...Chie-senpai, are you scared of spiders?” Risette sounded absolutely thrilled by this information.

“Sh-shut up! They’re like bugs, only worse because they have even more legs!”

Kanji glanced at the others. “...We gonna tell her about millipedes?”

“She’d hate it.” And then there was someone else there, a girl with jet-black hair and deep green eyes, that looked like she was about high school age, but that Yosuke had never seen before.

He wondered if it was worth even trying to make sense of this situation.

* * *

  
  


Ren paused. Blinked. Made sure that he wasn’t imagining one of the people from the Velvet Room suddenly showing up in Yasogami High.

Sure, of Igor, Lavenza, and Marie, the last one was the one that he’d expect to be out of the Velvet Room, but he hadn’t been sure she even knew where Yasogami High was. Or that it existed. Her knowledge of things in reality wasn’t exactly complete.

“...Marie-san?” He ventured, once he was absolutely certain this wasn’t a hallucination. “What are you doing here?”

“Lavenza sent me,” She said, which explained exactly nothing. “The Nose stepped out for a while, she took over the fortunetelling booth downstairs… She wants to see you and your friends.”

“My… friends?” Ren’s friends had never met Lavenza, because Lavenza never left the Velvet Room. “What does she want them for?”

“I dunno. I’m just the messenger. Hey, who’s that?”

“Oh, that’s just Yosuke,” Chie shrugged, apparently recovered from the potential presence of the arachnid variety.

“...Hey, Yosuke, you want to come along with us?” Ren wondered if Marie was doing this on purpose. He’d certainly never tried introducing people to the unique brand of crazy that made up the Velvet Room before, and with good reason. “You’ll get to see something really cool.”

Yosuke glanced at the deserted room around him, and then at the group. “Um… sure, I guess?” Ren could already tell that this was probably going to end badly. But he didn’t have it in him to try and stop Marie.

* * *

  
  


The hallways were deserted. The only signs of activity were a group of people of all ages walking down the hall, and a girl with long silver hair, dark blue clothes, and piercing golden eyes standing outside of a fortunetelling booth.

“There you are,” The girl greeted Marie. “And… you’ve brought everyone, as well.”

Marie crossed her arms. “Of course I did. What did you want them for, anyway?”

The girl cast her gaze over the group, and Ken found himself flinching away just a little. It wasn’t that he had anything against the girl herself, it was just that she reminded him a lot of her siblings. While he hadn’t met Elizabeth and Theodore that often, they were very memorable.

“There’s… something,” She stated, “That is off about this school, and that seems to be centered on this room.” She tapped the fortunetelling booth. Ken wasn’t sure it had been that blue the last time he passed by it. “And… I thought it would be best, if you were all here to see it.”

“Is it because of Big Bro’s magic?” Nanako asked. “And everyone else’s?”

Right. Nanako knew that Ken and his friends weren’t entirely normal, because she’d noticed the way that they healed whenever they ate. She didn’t know any of the specifics- even the word Persona was something that had so far been kept from her- but she was well aware that it wasn’t a coincidence if it felt warmer than usual around Yukiko.

The girl nodded. “Their abilities make them incredibly suited to work with such things.” And then she turned to Marie. “...Why did you bring the ones who didn’t have power?” She didn’t sound upset, more curious.

“...I dunno. Felt like it.”

Lavenza sighed. “...Very well. Come in, then.” And she led them through the door.

The room she led them into was blue, blue like Lavenza’s clothes, and Theo’s, and Elizabeth’s. There was a pair of giant doors on the far side of the room, bound tightly shut by a quartet of locks, all of them looking different. Tarot cards danced across the floor as bright lights.

It was all incredibly familiar, and Ken had no idea why.

This was the Velvet Room, right?

Ren stepped forward. “What is this place? It feels like the Velvet Room, but…”

“It is the Velvet Room,” Lavenza agreed. “And it wasn’t before. And it has been transformed into this shape, rather than the one that you are used to.”

Ken blinked. “It doesn’t always look like this?” Then why had he recognized it?

“It’s usually a train car,” Ren reminded him. Right, he remembered hearing about that.

But seeing the room this way… it felt right. Like it was meant to be like this. Like he’d seen it this way before. And he just didn’t know why.

“...It’s really pretty,” Nanako said.

“It’s weird, is what it is.” Yosuke shoved his hands into his pockets.

Naoto sighed. “...You could always go back outside and wait for us.”

“...Yeah, all right.” He turned around, walked to the exit of the room, and paused. “Wait… something’s weird outside.”

Chie glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

“Just… look.”

And so, the group of Persona Users, plus Yosuke and Nanako, piled out of the Velvet Room and back into the hallway. A hallway that was much, much busier than it had been a minute ago. Filled with people that Ken didn’t remember seeing at all earlier. But he wouldn’t say that there were no faces in the crowd that he recognized, just that he didn’t know where that recognition came from.

Kala-Nemi stirred, and Ken came to another realization, unsure where it came from, but entirely certain of its accuracy.

They weren’t in Inaba anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had two title ideas for this story, and all of them would have fit Q2 better by way of having more past selves, and making the timeline even more pretzely, so I just picked the one that sounded funniest in the moment and now I have a title for if this series ever reaches Q2.
> 
> Basic overview of what you need to know about this AU: P3 everyone lives, Ken takes the P4 protag's place, sort of, except Ren lives in Inaba and is the local Wild Card, and also Ren has both Arsene and Izanagi Picaro for reasons. Also, Teddie's the same age as Ken and Ren and goes to their school. That's basically it.


	2. In Which It Starts to Sink In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They realize that they're no longer in Inaba.

If someone had no sensitivity to supernatural matters, and no knowledge of the student body of Yasogami High, they probably wouldn’t have seen anything wrong with the massive crowd of people coursing through the hallways.

Ren didn’t have that much knowledge of the high school, but he did have the power of Persona, and both Arsene and Izanagi Picaro were shifting about uncomfortably. Something wasn’t right here.

“...Hey, does anything about those people feel strange to you?” Rise asked. If they’d been in the TV, Ren was sure that Kanzeon would be out and scanning the crowd.

Teddie glanced up at her. “You feel it, too?”

“Yeah. I don’t know what, but… there’s something off about them. Yukiko-senpai, Chie-senpai, do you recognize any of them?”

“Now that you think of it…” Yukiko looked through the crowd. “...No. I don’t see anyone that I know.” She didn’t sound entirely concerned by this.

Nanako ventured forward a few steps, but Ken reached out an arm and stopped her. “You… probably shouldn’t wander off too far,” He warned her. “I don’t know where we are now, but… it’s not Inaba.”

“Not Inaba?” Ren repeated. The words sounded strange to him- why wouldn’t this be Inaba, this was their friends’ school- but they also made some amount of sense. “Then where are we?”

“That’s a very good question,” Lavenza stated. “Though you are correct. It seems that, when you all crossed the boundaries of the Velvet Room… something changed, and led you all here. What this place is, and why it takes the form of the high school… that is yet to be uncovered.”

Marie turned to her. “Has the Nose been giving you lessons on how to be cryptic?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But she sounded really pleased with herself all the same. So even if she hadn’t been getting lessons from Igor, she was probably trying her hardest to copy him. “I am doing my best to serve my Guest, as is my duty.”

Still, either she didn’t know what this place was, or she did and wasn’t telling the rest of them. It added up to the same thing either way. “Should we… look around?” Ren suggested. “I don’t think we’ll learn a lot if we just stand here all day.”

“Can we get yakisoba on the way?” Teddie asked. “Look, they’re serving it over there!”

Naoto sighed. “Amada-kun, do you think it would be safe to eat the food here?”

“Well…” Ken actually paused to think about it. “If it actually looks like regular food, it should probably be fine? If you don’t know what it is, you shouldn’t put it in your mouth, but all the stuff that caused problems for SEES looked… pretty unappetizing.”

“SEES?” ...Right, and Yosuke was there, too.

“They’re a group that Ken-senpai’s a part of.” That was a good explanation, right? “They used to deal with this sort of thing a lot.” Or something close to it, but Ren was pretty sure that having a Persona was going to be a help here, if only due to how his were so close to the surface.

“A lot of them still do, actually,” Ken mentioned. “They’re called the Shadow Operatives now, and mostly they don’t do much for us in Inaba because they still have classes and stuff to go to in Iwatodai. We get to do a lot more than them, though. Akihiko-san’s… not thrilled about it.”

Yosuke groaned. “This’d make more sense if I knew what ‘this kind of thing’ even is.”

“It’s magic!” Nanako declared, as if this was a perfectly adequate answer to everything. Maybe, in her mind, it was.

“It’s dangerous,” Ken added. “So the two of you should stay close to the rest of us, because… I’d say that we know what we’re doing, but…” They really didn’t.

“Ken-kun’s been part of this for more than four years, now,” Yukiko added. “Though… he’s only been really doing things for two…”

Yosuke did not seem satisfied with this answer. Maybe it was just because he didn’t want to take orders from a thirteen-year-old. “So… we’re listening to a kid about this?”

“This kid is the reason we’re all still alive,” Rise pointed out. “Come on, do you want to go exploring or not?”

And with that, she strolled out into the crowd. Ren supposed that, if there was danger, she’d probably be able to sense it in time to get out of there.

The group started splitting up from there. Still, as long as nobody without powers ended up on their own, it’d probably be fine. There weren’t any obvious signs of Shadows about, or anything. And Shadows weren’t exactly subtle- even Teddie, who didn’t really follow the same rules as other Shadows, was roughly as subtle as a brick at the best of time. His Shadow form even squeaked while moving!

Not that it mattered, when the boy who wandered through the halls with them was currently very human. Which was sort of weird, in a place that probably wasn’t part of their world. Normally, he was all squeaky steps and twitching ears.

Just another sign of how strange this day was quickly becoming.

* * *

  
  


There was something familiar about this. Ken would have said that it was just the fact that it was an unnervingly good copy of Yasogami High, but even beyond that… it was something that put him on edge, as he walked the hallways with Nanako and Naoto.

And then, they walked in front of a window, and Kala-Nemi sparked. He looked to see what could have possibly caused such a reaction, and saw something outside that he was sure wasn’t part of the school he’d been visiting. “Um, Naoto-san… has that always been there?”

“No.” The reply was immediate. Ken couldn’t tell if that was relieving or not. “There hasn’t been a clock tower at Yasogami High since shortly after you were born.”

Oh. Good. So he wasn’t imagining things.

“It’s really tall,” Nanako remarked, standing up on her toes so she could see better. “And… it’s broken?”

She was right. At a second glance, the hands on the clock face didn’t seem to be moving at all.

“Should we go take a closer look?” Naoto suggested. “This is, after all, a clear anomaly.”

It made sense, when she put it like that, but… “I don’t think so,” He found himself saying. “At least, not without the others.” Finding something that was obviously strange was good. Going to poke at it without backup… not so much.

Especially not when his other self was so wary of it.

“...Big Bro? Is something wrong?”

“Not… not more than for anyone else.” At least, he didn’t think it was. He couldn’t be the only one feeling these things, right? “But I don’t think we should go near the clock tower.”

* * *

  
  


When Ken had said they weren’t in Inaba anymore, Yosuke hadn’t wanted to believe him.

Sure, he wasn’t the biggest fan of the town. The instant he graduated, he planned on moving to a city somewhere and never returning. But there was a difference between leaving a place of his own free will and being randomly plucked from it by powers he didn’t understand.

And he definitely, definitely didn’t understand whatever powers had done this.

“Senpai, I don’t think you’re gonna be able to leave this way…” He didn’t want to admit it, but Kanji was probably right. If only because he’d been trying and failing to walk through the school gate for the past five minutes.

Not that he was sure where he’d have gone from here. Inaba had vanished, replaced by a flat plane of nothingness. It was as though Yasogami High made up the entire world.

Which… well, even if it wasn’t in Inaba, Yosuke wouldn’t want his school to make up the entire world. Though… he wasn’t sure he could really say the school was in Inaba, at the moment.

“Well, how else are we supposed to leave?” At least he didn’t have a shift to work today that he’d be missing, but he wanted to go home.

“I dunno. Bet Rise’d be able to find a way, though. Eventually.” The use of the word eventually scared him. How long could they be stuck here, spending all their time looking for a way out? “Let’s… go tell the others we’re stuck here.”

And that had to be in person. Because nobody’s phones worked. The first thing Yosuke had done was try and call home, but there was no cell service.

Or GPS, but given the complete lack of an outside world, that wasn’t even a surprise.

“...Yeah. All right.” Better than trying to walk out a gate that just kept putting him right back where he started. At least indoors, it was easier to pretend that they weren’t on an island in a sea of nothing.

But everyone else would probably want to hear about it, so he couldn’t pretend for all that much longer, could he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, Ken, not everyone gets feelings like that yet. You're just special.
> 
> Yosuke is still not having a very good day. An alternative title for this fic could be 'Yosuke and the Very Bad Day.' Except that just doesn't have the tone I was looking for.


	3. In Which They Discover Wonderland

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After half an hour of searching for answers, the first lead they choose to inspect is the display "You in Wonderland."
> 
> The fact that Shadows are involved isn't really a surprise to anyone at this point, except for maybe Yosuke and Nanako, and they don't count.

Everyone met up about half an hour after they’d initially split up, by Ken’s estimation. Nobody’s watches or anything were working at the moment, but Tartarus had given him more than enough practice at figuring out lengths of time less than an hour. It had been sort of important for everyone to know so that none of them missed school.

Despite the time they’d spent exploring, clues weren’t very quick to present themselves. “I tried asking people where we were,” Yukiko stated. “And all they said was… ‘this is Yasogami High.’ Or… ‘isn’t the Culture Festival fun?’”

“It was really creepy,” Chie added. “Like the school’s been taken over by zombies. And we couldn’t find a teacher anywhere!”

No teachers… Ken had visited the Culture Festival at Gekkoukan just the year before at his friends’ invitation, and it normally hadn’t taken that much searching to find an adult, presumably because they didn’t trust their students not to blow something up. Given how one of the most influential students in the school was Kotone, they might have had a point. Not having teachers around was one of those things he was pretty sure was supposed to not happen.

But then, at least they wouldn’t have to answer awkward questions about who they were and what they were doing. If that was even something they’d have had to worry about to begin with. Nobody registered Lavenza’s presence, and her family was made of the sort of people you just couldn’t help but notice. It was like they weren’t even there.

“I… guess that means we won’t get in trouble if something big happens,” He suggested, taking little comfort in the idea himself. “...This doesn't mean you can just set things on fire.”

“I won’t,” Yukiko promised. “Not unless I have to, anyway.”

Yosuke was now openly staring at Yukiko. Right. Of all the impressions she tended to give, ‘arsonist’ was one that was very definitely limited to other Persona Users. “...You know, I always thought it’d be Chie who’d end up doing that.”

“No, she just freezes things.”

“...Right.” He seemed to still be having problems adjusting, but it wasn’t exactly normal for someone to be able to adapt to these situations without any sort of issue, so Ken figured it wasn’t worth worrying about. “...By the way, you can’t leave through the gates. It just dumps you back here. Not that you’d have anywhere to go through them…”

“There’s a big clock tower outside,” Nanako noted. “That’s not supposed to be here. But Big Bro says not to touch it.”

And now they all clearly expected him to justify himself. “It could be dangerous,” He said. “And it- it doesn’t feel like it’s time to go near it.” He wasn’t sure why he was trusting these feelings, except for how they almost seemed to come from a part of himself even deeper than Kala-Nemi. It wasn’t just something he thought.

It was something he knew.

“The stalls are different from the ones we were running, too,” Rise remarked. “That cosplay cafe? It’s an Alice in Wonderland display now. And…” She trailed off.

Ren looked to her. “Rise-san? Is something wrong?”

“I- I got a strange feeling from that display, but I… thought it’d be better to wait until I had all of you there. It feels like… Well, almost like the world inside the TV.”

“...World inside the TV?” Nanako repeated. Ken winced. He hadn’t wanted to have to explain that.

“I’ll… tell you about it later,” He promised. Once he’d thought of how he was supposed to explain things. “I… think we should go along with what Rise-san says, for now.”

At the very least, it couldn’t be more confusing than anything that was happening already.

* * *

  
  


You in Wonderland. A display that seemed innocuous enough, when Ren looked at it from outside, except that he couldn’t actually see what was inside it. A display that, when he stepped inside it, seemed to transport him to another world entirely.

“Wh-what is this place!?” If Yosuke had seemed ill at ease before, now he was openly on the verge of panic.

“I don’t know,” Rise stated. “But… does anyone else feel them?”

Teddie sniffed the air. It looked a bit strange even when he looked like a Shadow- as a human, it was downright bizarre. “...Shadows! Lots of them!”

Chie crossed her arms. “Really? Shadows in a school?”

“It’s… not as unlikely as you’d think.” Ken glanced off to the side. “That was… actually where my senpai and I fought a lot of Shadows together.”

“Okay, I think I’m missing something. What are Shadows?”

“Beings that live in places like this,” Naoto explained. “They come in all forms, from disembodied hands to beings indistinguishable from actual humans. A vast majority of them are hostile to humanity, and they all have powers that can make them dangerous.”

Ren wondered if ‘all of them’ might actually have been a bit of an exaggeration. When they’d first met Teddie, all he’d been able to do was make exit TVs.

...And then he remembered what the little bear had done to Rise’s Shadow, and decided that Naoto had a point, after all.

“...Can you summon Kanzeon?” He asked Rise. “See how many there are?”

“I- I’m not sure if I can. I mean, this is a school, right?”

“Yeah, but… our Personas are pretty active right now, aren’t they?” Arsene was seeping into a state of watchfulness, ready to go on the alert at any time. “It should be easier than if it was actually your school, at least.”

“...All right, then. Persona!” At her call, she was enveloped in blue light, which coalesced into the familiar striped form of Kanzeon. “There’s… lots of them! They’re all over the place! And I can’t even tell where all the paths go… it’s just a big labyrinth!”

Yosuke and Nanako were now staring outright, Yosuke a lot more obviously than Nanako. Nanako just tugged on Ken’s sleeve. “Big Bro, what’s that?”

“That… it’s called a Persona. It’s what lets us use our magic.”

“So… do you have one, too? Can I see it?”

“I- I have one, but-” Ken’s hand had already moved into the shape of a gun. Ren wondered if he even realized he was doing it or not.

“I want to see!”

Ken was clearly putting in the effort to resist, but then he met Nanako’s eyes, and Ren knew he was doomed. “...All right. Kala-Nemi!” His hand moved so quickly, Ren wouldn’t have noticed the gesture he’d made if he hadn’t known what he was looking for, the towering shape of his Persona flashing into existence for just a moment before fading away once again.

Nanako blinked at where Ken’s Persona had been, and then glanced at where Rise was still using Kanzeon’s powers, but didn’t say anything.

“...Okay, that’s real cool,” Yosuke said. “So, how do you get these powers?” He sounded excited already. Ren hated to break it to him, but…

“You have to see everything about yourself you don’t want,” He explained. “And you have to accept it, or it grows way too big and tries to kill you. I… don’t think that’d be a very good idea right now.”

Ken nodded. “You should stay outside with Nanako, and the girls from the Velvet Room. It’ll be safer, that way.”

“Y-you want me to wait outside?”

“It won’t be that bad,” Rise said. “I can reach out really far in here, so I should be able to stay by here for now. We’re not leaving you completely on my own.”

“But the kids get to go in?”

‘The kids,’ as he put it, could fire massive bolts of lightning or turn Inaba into their own private winter wonderland. But then, maybe that just hadn’t sunk in yet.

“Those three are more than capable of defending themselves,” Naoto pointed out. “...In fact, I’m sure that they could make it through a good portion of this place completely on their own.”

“I know!” Rise sounded far too excited. “We’ll send those three into the Labyrinth themselves, at least until they get to…” She paused. “...To the first room. And if they come back safe, you have to listen to us and stay outside.”

“...And if they don’t?”

“...I’m not sure, actually…” She turned to Ken, Ren, and Teddie. “You three, make sure you get back safe, all right?”

...Ren wasn’t sure how he’d been dragged into this, but he got the feeling that he didn’t actually have a choice about any of it.

* * *

  
  


Teddie didn’t like this place. There was something not quite right about it, and he didn’t like it one bit!

It wasn’t the fact that Shadows were here. Not really. He was used to Shadows, even if he was realizing, more and more, that he prefurred the company of humans. It was just something about the walls, the smells, the air itself that Teddie didn’t like.

Kenny and Renren seemed to realize it, too- or, at least, they were also tense about something. He didn’t know the reason.

“...You know, we probably should have found something to use as weapons,” Kenny noted.

Renren grinned. “Speak for yourself.” And suddenly he was holding a pair of daggers.

“...Why do you even have those with you?”

“...It seemed like a good idea at the time?”

Teddie figured that they probably didn’t want him to involve himself in their conversation at the moment, and also he didn’t know whose side he wanted to take, so he let himself tune it out. This was probably a mistake, as the atmosphere of the Labyrinth immediately started creeping in.

Even without the cold, he shivered, and huddled in on himself a bit more. He might have been a native of this kind of place, but he’d never been somewhere that had other Shadows in it without his fur before. It made him feel naked.

Even when things in his world had been at their worst, he’d never felt this exposed before. Not even when his Shadow showed up, and kept pointing out things that he knew were better left hidden. Getting a human body had turned his fur into a sanctuary, of sorts, one that he’d never imagined that he’d have to do without.

And yet, there he was. Walking through this place as human as he’d ever be.

The Shadows, at least, weren’t much of a threat. The mouthlike Hableries from Teddie’s home, blobby things that Kenny called Mayas, dispatched without the need for weapons. Kintoki-Douji came to Teddie easily here, and it only became simpler once the first Maya was encased in a block of ice. As vulnerable as he felt, there wasn’t much reason he shouldn’t have been able to keep himself safe, no matter how confusing this place was, with all the new sights and scents.

Teddie paused, and another new scent made its way to him, one that was out of place in this hallway they were walking.

Renren noticed he’d stopped, and turned back to him. “Teddie? Is something wrong?”

Teddie sniffed the air again. He couldn’t smell things as well as he’d used to, but there was definitely something he hadn’t smelled before- at least one thing, and possibly more. “I… think there’s something up ahead.” In the room that Rise-chan was sending them to, even. “Or… someone.” He would have prefurred it to be someone over something. If it was a person, then maybe he could make a new friend.

“People? Here?” It was impossible to tell what Kenny was feeling, at the moment. “...Rise-san?”

_ “There’s something up ahead.” _ Rise-chan’s voice echoed through the hallway, despite how she wasn’t anywhere near them. Teddie couldn’t remembear this ever happening before, but maybe that was because Rise-chan was normally there with the rest of them.  _ “But I can’t tell if it’s a person or not… I just can’t get a good read on them.” _

Well. That wasn’t beary good. Rise-chan was supposed to be the best one there at finding things out bearcause of her powers.

“I guess we’ll just have to find out,” Renren stated, as though his prickles of worry didn’t exist. He walked in to the room, and Teddie and Kenny followed after him.

There was someone in the room with them. Two someones, a girl with flowers in her hair and a guy with a beary nice watch. They both froze at the appearance of three new people.

Kenny went still. Teddie wasn’t sure why, but his gaze was fixed on the two of them, tension so clear that he found himself moving away a bit, just so he didn’t get struck by lightning.

And then the guy with the watch opened his mouth to speak. So did Kenny.

They said the same thing.

“Who are you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the very least, this cannot turn out worse than the other event that would force Ken to explain magic to family members.
> 
> Teddie isn't having a very good time right now. Even if it's no longer the only body he has, he's beary attached to his fur, and this is probably not the best time for him to lose that security blanket. What with the regular life-threatening situations, and everything.
> 
> Hi, Zen. Please don't shoot anyone. I still need them.


	4. In Which We Meet Zen and Rei

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the Labyrinth, Ken, Ren, and Teddie encounter two new people. Their names are Zen and Rei, and they don't remember a thing.
> 
> And yet this still isn't the most confusing thing that's happened to them today.

Ken looked the closer of the new people in the eye, and his heart clenched. He didn’t know why, but something about these two… He couldn’t describe how, but it felt strange, seeing them here. But also sort of right.

“I- My name’s Ken,” He said, after realizing that neither of them were going to speak until he did. “...What are yours?”

The boy with the watch relaxed, just a little, and his hand moved ever so slightly away from his crossbow. “I am Zen, and this is Rei. That is what we call each other.”

Zen and Rei. The names sounded right, and Ken found himself mouthing them as Zen said them. Like he already knew them, somehow.

Rei peeked out from behind Zen, glancing at Ren and Teddie. “Who are…?”

“I’m Teddie! It’s nice to meet you, Rei-chan!” And it was just like Teddie to throw caution to the wind.

“A-and I’m Ren,” Ren finished, adjusting his glasses. “What are you two doing here? There’s… not really a lot of actual people about.” Never mind how unsafe this place was.

“We were here when we gained consciousness,” Zen explained. “We do not remember anything before that.”

“Our memories were taken,” Rei elaborated. Which didn’t do a lot to explain things, really, but maybe that was the point. It wasn’t like Shadows liked to let most people know what they’d been doing. For big enough things, even Persona Users could be hit with the urge to think it had never happened. For all Ken knew, these two had wandered into something big, and had everything taken from them on the way out.

Just like SEES, in February of 2010.

He would have felt bad about their situation even if the comparison hadn’t occurred to him. “They… were taken? Do you know who did it?”

They both shook their heads.

Ren blinked. “Even though you remember someone taking them.”

“Even though we remember someone taking them.” Rei was like… well, like a parrot, maybe, except less cheerful. It was sort of worrying, really. “What are you three doing here?”

“We’re exploring!” Teddie declared, having apparently missed the mood of the conversation entirely, or maybe having simply chosen to ignore it. It was hard to tell with him. “Rise-chan told us to come as far as this room. ...Hey, Rise-chan, we’re here!”

_ “I’ve noticed.” _ From how the others blinked at hearing her voice, they clearly weren’t used to Navigator broadcasting yet. But then, Ken supposed he couldn’t blame them, given how it had been a matter of minutes since they heard her doing so for the first time, and honestly, he wasn’t entirely used to it anymore, either.  _ “So… Zen-kun and Rei-chan, right?” _ And somehow, the fact that she’d picked those specific terms of address for the two didn’t surprise Ken in the slightest.

“Who is this?” And then Zen’s hand found its way back to his crossbow. Because of course it did. That didn’t surprise Ken in the slightest, either. “Where are you?”

_ “I’m back at the entrance. My name’s Rise.” _ Rise sounded completely unconcerned, but then, with how far away she was, she could afford to be.  _ “I’m talking to you right now because my Persona lets me do that.” _

Rei blinked. “What’s a Persona?”

Ren sighed. “Why don’t we… go back to the entrance and talk? That might be safer.”

* * *

  
  


When the kids came out of the Labyrinth, carrying the severed tongues of their enemies- and Yosuke wasn’t even sure why they did that, what reason could there possibly be for keeping a giant tongue around- they were followed by two people that he definitely didn’t know, both wearing the uniform of Yasogami High.

As soon as they stepped out, the- thing? Person? Being?- that surrounded Rise vanished, and she turned to face them. “Welcome back, everyone. I take it you’re Zen-kun and Rei-chan?”

“That is correct,” The new guy stated. “You’re the voice from before.”

When the kids vanished into the hallways, the rest of the group hadn’t exactly split up- they’d all been too awkward to know where to go. The girls from the Velvet Room had also turned up at some point, but Yosuke hadn’t tried talking to them yet. They were sort of intimidating.

“My name’s Rise. And these are the rest of the team… also Nanako-chan, Marie-chan, Lavenza-chan, and... Yosuke-senpai.” Like he was nothing more than an afterthought.

“You know, I’m not sure that’s the best introduction…” Kanji mumbled. “Dunno what is, but…”

“...I see. It’s nice to meet you all.”

“Nice to meet you all!” The girl, who had longer hair than could possibly be practical, parroted, her eyes wide and taking in the sight of all the new people. She sounded a lot more excited about meeting them than her friend did.

“I didn’t think anyone else would be here,” Naoto remarked. “How did you arrive?”

“They don’t know,” Ren explained. “They say that they don’t remember anything.”

“They said that someone took them!” Teddie elaborated. “Do you think they’re still here? I don’t want them to take my memories!”

“That won’t happen,” Ken reassured him. “...At least, I don’t think I will… Persona Users are more resistant to that kind of thing… probably…” He didn’t sound entirely certain about that.

“Well, what about my memories?” Yosuke asked. As altogether terrible of a time as he’d been having for the past year or so, as irrelevant as the time before was turning out to be, that didn’t mean he wanted to forget it! He needed those memories! “I don’t have one of your Persona things.” Really, he still wasn’t sure they hadn’t all just gone crazy.

“I-I’m not magic, either,” Nanako quietly pointed out.

“You will have nothing to worry about,” The somewhat scary girl in blue reassured her. “If any being wants to affect your mind, it will have to get through me first. For him, as well.”

Somehow, that was the most reassuring thing that Yosuke had heard all day.

Ren blinked at her. “You’ll really do that? Until we go back?”

“Go… back...?” Rei asked.

“To where we came from,” Ken explained. “The real Yasogami High. If we’re lucky, the Labyrinth will have a way for us to do that. Do you want to come with us?”

And there he was, asking this random girl and her friend to join them, while people he’d actually come in with got left by the entrance.

“I… I want to go back, too.” She turned to her friend. “Zen! I want to go back, too!”

...And it appeared that the two of them were going to accept. Because of course they were. They were going to go on an adventure into a place that seemed impossible. Who could ever turn that down?

And why was Ken expecting that anyone would want to?

* * *

  
  


Now that they knew the school had Shadows in it, things had to change. They needed a place where they could recuperate between expeditions- because the Labyrinth clearly wasn’t the kind of place that could be cleared in a single day, unlike the locations in the TV World- as well as things that they could use as weapons, because Chie’s cleats and the knives Ren had brought along with him just weren’t enough for nine people. Kanji would probably be fine just picking up another desk, or maybe someone’s stall, but the rest of them would have to actually look for their supplies.

“Is there a drama room?” Ren suggested. “Or a crafts room? There might be something you all could use there.” He seemed to be perfectly happy with his pair of daggers. Ken wondered if he’d be so confident if their situations were reversed.

Still, he supposed that trying to find a proper weapon would probably be better than resorting to raiding the gym for sporting equipment. Which wasn’t exactly off the table, even if he wasn’t sure any of the group actually knew how to use sporting equipment. It wasn’t like a lot of athleticism was required in order to beat a table to death with a hockey stick or a baseball bat, even if Kotone and Junpei were admittedly more athletic than some of the members of this team.

“I… suppose we could check there,” He agreed. “And the gym. Or a closet- a mop’s pretty close to a spear, right?” He’d be more able to stab things with one of those than with a hockey stick, at least.

“...Okay, but let’s start with the craft room.” Fair enough.

“I know where it is!” Rei volunteered. “We can stop by the donut shop on our way!”

“...There’s a donut shop?” Chie sounded confused. She wasn’t the only one.

As Rei set off through the halls of people who didn’t truly register their presence, Ken fell to the back of the group, where Nanako was trailing after them. “How are you doing? I… know this whole thing can be… it’s a lot, at first.”

“It’s… There’s a lot more magic than I thought there’d be.” She bit her lip. “There’s stuff you haven’t even told me about!”

He tried his hardest not to flinch. “I mean… This isn’t exactly fun and games. Anything to do with Shadows is dangerous.” Except for Teddie, who was basically harmless to anything except for other Shadows, but he didn’t count. “Even if you have a Persona… if you’re not careful, even your own powers could turn against you.” He hadn’t wanted her to get hurt, and the best way to stop that from happening was to avoid involving her any more than necessary.

It just hadn’t occurred to him that it wasn’t him who decided what amount of involvement was necessary.

Nanako’s gaze was now on him, wider than he’d thought it could get. “Did- did that ever happen to you?”

He looked at the ground. “...Not to me. But… it’s happened to some of my senpai, before. It never ended well.” He hoped she wouldn’t ask for examples. There was exactly one he’d ever been directly there for, and that was… not something he was inclined to share at the best of times. “...I’m not sure it’d matter how much I told you before. Getting too close to this sort of stuff… it tends to make people forget, if they don’t have a Persona. Sometimes even if they do.”

“...Is that why you don’t want to tell Dad about it? Because he’ll forget?” If only that had been the reason. If only he could lie to her and say that it was.

“It’s more that… there’s some things I can’t let him know about. And once he knows magic exists…” He wasn’t sure how many steps there were between ‘Shadows and Personas are a thing’ and ‘Maybe the kid wasn’t imagining things after all,’ but whatever the answer was, it was not enough to be comfortable with. “He won’t like what he finds out.”

“...Oh.” Nanako still looked curious, but she didn’t inquire any farther. Ken supposed he should have found that relieving.

As it was, he knew that he’d have more questions to answer eventually, and that he still had no clue how to respond to them.

But then, it wasn’t like that was the only part of that day that confused him. At least, with Nanako, the questions had an answer, no matter how little he wanted to give them. Some of the other things, he wasn’t so sure about.

Even if they did have an answer, he didn’t know if he really wanted to learn it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zen and Rei's introduction is one of those things that's easy to remember, because the one real difference between the two sides is the location where it happens. Combined with how you'll see them on every P3 side playthrough that reaches a save point, and it's sort of impossible to forget.
> 
> On the P3 side, starting without proper weapons makes no sense when you remember that they were about to go into Tartarus, unless you think that MC was just taking that long, and there's no excuse for not having good armor. P4 side, though? They've definitely got to scramble to try and have anything with more combat effectiveness than a pointy stick.
> 
> ...Honestly, though, since Ken's on the team, a pointy stick might actually be an improvement, in this case.


	5. In Which Logistics Are Covered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armor, weapons, and medicine are all things that a group of Persona Users needs. Thankfully, Lavenza and Marie have them covered.

The crafts room was a mess.

A pink and blue strawberry rug was laid out on the floor, and was an island of neatness in a sea of chaos. Every table was covered in its own kind of untidiness, from glued-together bits of construction paper to plastic swords that Ken would have said had been misplaced from the drama room, if he wasn’t aware that things here didn’t have to have some deep meaning.

Sometimes, the reason for something to be in a place was just that the place itself wanted it to be there.

Sometimes, the reason for someone to be in a place was just because that was where they were meant to be.

“I am not sure how useful these will be to you in combat,” Zen stated, calmly picking up a plastic sword from the ground. “These are just toys.”

As true as that was, all Ken could think of, in that moment, was how none of this team used swords, anyway. If this had been SEES, with Mitsuru and Minato and Junpei, he might have instead thought of how there still wouldn’t be enough swords for the three of them. Either way, his thoughts weren’t exactly at their most collected.

Lavenza stepped into the room, and they all fell silent, as if her very presence there meant something, and none of them wanted to miss it. “Perhaps I may be of some assistance, then. There are materials here that I could work from, I’d just need...” Her gaze slipped over to Ken.

“...Do you mean these?” He asked, fumbling to retrieve some of the Shadow parts they’d picked up in the Labyrinth. Yukiko had taken to asking everyone to pick them up for her, for some reason, and they’d all had long enough to get into the habit. Except for Chie, of course, but she was the new person. She didn’t count.

The parts were taken from his hand immediately, and Lavenza turned and immediately started doing something with them. “Normally, I would request payment for these services,” She said as she worked, “But given the circumstances, I will provide everyone with one item free of charge. ...You may wish to upgrade later, of course.”

Ren gave a heavy sigh. “...Of course.”

This actually answered a few of Ken’s questions about how the SEES Wild Cards had arranged their budgets. It was nice to finally have an answer to them.

“You don’t hafta worry about getting stuff for me,” Kanji said. “I’ll just… figure something out.”

“No stealing the festival stalls,” Yukiko told him.

Rei nodded vigorously. “Right! We get food from there!”

“Ah, Rei-san, would you like a weapon, too?” That seemed like a sort of important thing to have.

She shook her head. “...I’m fine. I’ve got Zen.” As if that was the only thing that could ever possibly be part of her concern. Ken supposed it was her decision, as risky of one as it was.

“She will also have the support of all of you.” Lavenza held a weapon in her hand, now, a spear unlike any that Ken had seen before. She handed it to him. “I am… unsure if this type of spear has a name. Or if any other like it exists. As the one who will wield it, perhaps you should be the one to give it a name.”

Ken supposed that was only fair, if only because his spears back home all had names, as well. That some of them overlapped with the names of legendary weapons was something that he wasn’t sure about the significance of, but it was an easy way for him to sort through them.

He’d never seen a weapon quite like this before, but just by holding it in his hand, he knew exactly what it was meant to be called.

“I’ll call it… a Treason Couse.” The name almost sounded familiar, but he was sure that he’d never heard it before… right?

Rise blinked. “...You know, that’s not a name I’d think would come from you. It’s just a bit… menacing, isn’t it?” He didn’t disagree with her. But that was the name that felt right. He just hoped that nobody would ever ask him to explain it.

* * *

  
  


Besides weapons and armor, they also needed medicines. While Ren was sure that there was enough food in the festival to heal whatever injuries they came across, applying a few bandages was a lot quicker, and also they were easier to carry around. What with coming with their own packaging, and not needing to be put in specific containers, and all.

“What about the Nurse’s Office?” Yosuke suggested. “I dunno how much’d be in there, but…”

“That's a great idea!” Chie enthusiastically agreed. “It’s pretty close by, too. Come on, let’s take a look.” And then she was off down the hallway, guided only by her own memories of the real Yasogami High.

Ken shuddered. Ren glanced at him. “Senpai, is something wrong?”

“Not really? I just… I’ve been getting strange feelings.”

“What do you mean?” Having Personas meant feeling things in ways that normal people didn’t, but Ken had had his powers for years now. Surely he’d be used to whatever kinds of feelings these adventures would produce. “What kind of strange feelings?”

“It’s almost… like I’ve been here before. And not just going to the gate to meet with everyone.” His hands tightened on the spear that Lavenza gave him- the Treason Couse, he’d called it. “Or… like there’s something big that’s going to happen. Or… Both. It’s both.”

Well. That might not have been the most confusing thing that Ren had ever heard, but it wasn’t like there wasn’t a lot of competition. “Have you ever… done something like this before?”

Ken shook his head. “I… think I’d remember, if something like this happened.” But he still sounded unsure. “I’d at least remember Zen-san and Rei-san.”

They were fairly memorable people. Ren wasn’t sure how to describe them, but they were definitely unique. “I guess you would… even if they didn’t remember you.” Because if their memories really had been taken, then even if Ken had met them before somehow, they wouldn’t know it. “...That’s scary to think about.”

“What is?”

“That… you could have friends who don’t remember you.” That one day, he could walk to the Dojima household and be met with nothing but blank stares in return, and a pantomime that would only be frightening because he knew exactly what it meant. “Or… being able to forget everything, even your friends.” Would he even be himself, if all of that was wiped away? If he forgot about Arsene?

“It’s not fun.” He hadn’t expected such a swift agreement. “But that’s what Shadows do. They mess with people’s memories.” That was the most confident Ken had sounded about something all day. But then, Ken had spent the earlier parts of the day shifting between confused and nervous about something, so that really wasn’t saying much.

Ren decided to just be glad that, as a Persona User, he probably wouldn’t have to worry about that.

* * *

  
  


There was some amount of medicine in the Nurse’s Office, which Marie promptly took over in the apparent hopes of making some extra pocket money. Yosuke wasn’t sure why everyone was being charged for restocking their first-aid kit while they were all trapped in the school, but he supposed that, as someone not allowed into the Labyrinths, it didn’t exactly matter to him.

“Is Big Bro going to be all right?” Nanako asked, as the group of people who were actually allowed inside- including three kids and one girl without a weapon- marched into a maze of monsters.

“Don’t worry, Nanako-chan,” Rise reassured her, calling up the being from before. “Your Big Bro’s the strongest Persona User that I’ve ever seen fight. He’s going to be just fine.”

Yosuke crossed his arms, and sat down in a nearby chair. “He’s the strongest? Really? He’s what, twelve?”

“Thirteen, actually. It’s Ren-kun who’s twelve. And maybe Teddie. It’s hard to tell with him…”

Somehow, despite all the weirdness of today, the fact that she didn’t seem to know her teammate’s age stuck out. “How can you not tell? Can’t you just ask?”

“That’s- well… See, the thing is, Teddie’s… special.” This didn’t clarify things to Yosuke at all. “I mean, for all we know, he could be just seven months old. He’s not exactly from Inaba.”

“That doesn’t explain anything!” Not that he’d really been expecting an explanation, at this point. “What’s that matter?”

Rise, despite being hidden behind her Persona’s visor, gave him a look. “...Senpai, have you ever seen a Shadow before?”

“...No?” At this point, he wasn’t entirely sure if the monsters they all supposedly fought even existed, though them bringing back the tongues of their enemies was a pretty good sign that they were real. Or bad sign, as it were.

“Bzzt! Wrong! You have met a Shadow before. You’ve met Teddie.”

Nanako blinked. “But… I thought Shadows were supposed to be scary. Teddie’s not scary.”

Right. The kid was a bit overly excitable, and would probably end up getting on Yosuke’s nerves sooner than later, but he definitely wasn’t scary.

“Right. Teddie’s special. He likes humans so much that he managed to become one. Just, um… try not to bring it up if you don’t have to. It’s sort of a touchy subject.”

If other Shadows were dangerous creatures with massive tongues, Yosuke could see why. And it did sort of explain why a kid was allowed into the Labyrinth, even if it didn’t nearly cover the other two.

He wondered if they’d let him join them if he managed to get some kind of weapon...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It probably says something that the introduction of explicit time travel to the plot will actually make things easier for the characters to understand.
> 
> I'd like to make it clear the the willingness of the Investigation Team to share important information is a lot greater than SEES'. To the surprise of absolutely nobody.


	6. In Which Exploration Doesn't Do Much

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An introduction to the concept of FOEs.

Ren couldn’t remember the last time he’d fought Shadows this weak.

It had to have happened, because he wasn’t always as powerful as he was now. But back then, he would have been as weak as they were, wouldn’t he? Anything easy about it would have come from having Ken there with him.

Still, it was nice to have a break of sorts. If this was what Ken felt like all the time, it was a wonder he stuck with them and didn’t wander off on his own to find something better to fight.

Something Chie seemed to agree with. “I thought this was supposed to be exciting,” She pouted, kicking a fallen Hablerie out of her way.

“They’re usually stronger than this,” Ken tried to assure her. “But they might get stronger deeper in. That’s how this usually works.”

Usually. There were exceptions. Ren liked those exceptions. Thought they were a nice way to relax, as much as he could relax in a place filled with Shadows.

“How much stronger?”

“It depends how deep it goes. Tartarus- the place I went with SEES- had hundreds of floors. The ones on the ground floor were really weak, but the ones on the peak were stronger than anything you guys have seen before. And then there was the basement…” He shuddered.

“...There was a basement?” Ren wasn’t sure why this was the most interesting thing to him, except for maybe how none of the places they’d visited so far had stairs in two directions. They just went up, and up, and up.

“Yeah. It just showed up one day after the Reaper was defeated. Minato-san and Kotone-san once went into the deepest part on their own, but…” Ken shrugged. “It was Minato-san and Kotone-san. If they couldn’t handle it, no one could.”

It was hard to imagine an opponent that Ken wouldn’t be able to handle. Ren had always known him as just the most powerful Persona User in all of Inaba. Even if the older Wild Cards were stronger than him… it just wasn’t something he could really picture.

_ “...Hey, while we’re talking about really strong enemies…” _ Rise’s uncertain voice echoed through the halls once again.  _ “There’s… something really powerful behind that next door.” _

If it was strong enough for her to be warning them about it, there was probably a problem. “...How powerful is it?”

_ “It’s not as bad as if you’d opened a chest, but…” _ Well. That was incredibly unspecific.  _ “It’s strong enough that we might as well call it something else.” _

“FOE.” Ken’s voice was so quiet, Ren wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t just imagining things.

Rei blinked. “You know them?”

“I- No, I was just… it just came to me.”

“Well, that’s what Zen calls them!” She paused. “...Well, actually, he calls them something else, but it’s too long, so I just call them FOEs.”

“Senpai, are you sure you’re all right? You’ve been acting odd all day.” From the moment they’d walked through the school gates, if not even longer.

“...I’ll be fine.” Ken pushed past the rest of them, opening the door.

Behind it was a playing card with a look on its face that Ren didn’t like.

He agreed with the rest of them. Something that looked like that definitely deserved a proper name.

* * *

  
  


Yosuke was bored. Sure, there was a festival around him to explore, but he’d been in a festival just like this one all day, constantly looked down on for making a joke suggestion that went way too far. He’d sort of fallen out of the spirit of the festivities.

What he was really interested in was the Labyrinth, but he wasn’t allowed in there, because all these people- who were younger than him, might he add- had superpowers, and he didn’t.

Another interesting thing was the superpowers, but almost everyone who had them had vanished into the maze and not come back yet, and Rise had made it very clear that, if he interrupted her, he could expect to be somehow thrown off the clock tower.

As Yosuke very definitely did not want to be thrown off the clock tower, he decided to keep a safe distance.

Still, there were plenty of other people he could ask, and so he found himself following Lavenza back to the blue room. “So, how does that power everyone has work, anyway?”

Lavenza paused in her shuffling of tarot cards, and placed the deck to the side. “Persona is the power of one’s heart,” She explained, as though that made anything more clear. “My Guest, and his friends, all have very strong hearts, even if, in one case, that power has yet to be properly honed, and even the best of them has yet to reach his full potential.”

“Okay, so can you put that in a language I actually speak?”

He was immediately fixed with a piercing golden stare. “This power isn’t something to be taken lightly,” She scolded him. “Trying to acquire it without being ready has killed many people in the attempt. Just as many have managed to gain power, only for it to turn on them. Of those cases… I only know of two who still live.”

Really? But it couldn’t be that hard, if a couple of kids had access to it.

“Why do you think I’d try anything? I wouldn’t even know where to start!”

“And that may be for the best.” In that moment, it really was impossible to see Lavenza as just a child the same age as Ken, Ren, or Teddie. There was something else there, something that Yosuke simply couldn’t comprehend. “I have seen many like you, and likely, I will see many more. It is a fool’s errand to grasp blindly for power. And you are no Fool.”

Somehow, he didn’t think that last sentence was meant to be a compliment.

* * *

  
  


It hadn’t taken long for them to decide that they needed a map.

Zen had been fast to offer one made from many student planners tied together, which had eventually found its way to Naoto. They all agreed that she was the one least likely to drop the map, or accidentally tear it, or start doodling in the margins.

She also had handwriting which wasn’t completely terrible, unlike Zen’s. It looked almost like he was trying to write in another language, and then remembering halfway through to use Japanese. While he said it was perfectly legible, the rest of them had their doubts.

“Another dead end this way…” Naoto mumbled to herself, making another line on the map. Ken wondered just what the final product would end up looking like. He had ideas, but they were even less solidly formed than his other thoughts on this place.

“It feels almost like we’re walking through a dream,” He stated, looking up at the blood red carpet floating above them. “Doesn’t it?” Tartarus had never been like this.

Neither had the TV World.

And yet, the whole arrangement felt no stranger than either of those. Maybe he’d just gotten so used to the Shadows that they could now do whatever and he wouldn’t even question it.

“Well, Alice in Wonderland is definitely a surreal book,” Yukiko pointed out. “We found a movie version once and watched it, and Chie had nightmares for weeks.”

“N-no I didn’t! And besides, you promised you wouldn’t tell anyone about it!” From the blush on Chie’s face, she was clearly much warmer than someone with a fire weakness would want to be. Still, Ken supposed there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Kanji glanced at her. “You know, there’s not much point in denying it if you’re gonna talk about it right after.” All he got in return was a pair of crossed arms and a huff.

“Still, why is the carpet floating?” Yukiko stared straight up at it. “Most of the Shadows at least pretend to respect gravity.”

Yes, but there were just as many of them that didn’t. Ken could think of a number of them, the Hableries that they had been fighting at the top of the list. “Maybe because it looks nice?”

“That’s probably the most logical explanation we can expect,” Naoto admitted, still not looking up from her task of map duty. “It isn’t as though the Shadows have to follow the same natural laws that we do.”

Technically speaking, they did, if only because gaining a Persona changed someone to where their limits just weren’t the same as a regular person’s. Sure, they didn’t levitate, or mess with the flow of time, but they could make fire and ice, control winds and lightning… even darkness was a force under their control. Ken didn’t think that regular physics could have an explanation for that.

And then there was Teddie, who existed basically to violate every norm that existed about Shadows. But he was an outlier, and should not have been counted.

“The carpet’s not all that interesting, really…” Chie grumbled. “All it does is float.”

Ken wondered how she’d react to being told that everywhere else he’d fought Shadows had much less in terms of decor than this. Most likely, she’d be bored out of her mind.

It was almost something to look forward to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yosuke is still not having a very good day. I could put this at the end of every chapter, and that wouldn't make it any less true.
> 
> The first floor of the Labyrinth really doesn't have anything worth going over at the moment. I miss the Group Date Cafe.


	7. In Which A Trip to The Velvet Room Is Required

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teddie notices something strange about Ren's combat habits, and brings it to everyone's attention.

There was something beary strange going on here.

Teddie didn’t mean the Labyrinths, though they were weird, and the difference in power levels between normal enemies and the FOEs was so large, he wondered how they could even coexist without normal Shadows being trampled beneath the cards’ feet.

He didn’t mean the FOEs themselves, though they definitely weren’t normal, and also he’d never be able to look at a deck of playing cards the same way ever again.

Being without his fur? Bad, wrong, borderline unbearable… but it was a risk he’d known was there from the second he’d first shed it in favor of a human form. Once he fully recognized he’d done so, at least.

No, the weird thing, the one that really stuck out in his mind, had to do with Renren.

Renren was a Wild Card. Teddie wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, except that he could have many, many Personas with him at a time, and sometimes he talked to Lavvy and Emmy-chan. He used those Personas, too, always having exactly the right one on paw for any sort of situation. Fire, ice, wind, lightning… he was the only one on the team with access to Frei, so he always had to have a Persona with him that could do that, just in case.

It wasn’t overly strange for Renren to swap the Persona he was using, multiple times if it was a drawn-out battle. Even here, where the Shadows were almost as weak as Teddie had been when they met, he was happy to swap between Arsene and his newest Persona, Izanagi Picaro.

And only Arsene and Izanagi Picaro.

So when they reached the stairs down to the next level, which existed below them in a realm of gold-orange just on the edge of his vision, he pawsed. “Renren? Is something wrong?”

Renren stopped, and adjusted his glasses, and turned to face him. “I… don’t think so? Why do you ask?”

“You’re not using as many Bearsonas as you usually do.” He was beary proud of himself for noticing that. He might not have been the group’s unofficial Navigator anymore, but he still liked noticing things. It made him feel more useful.

“...Hey, that’s right,” Kanji agreed with him. “You’ve normally got a lotta ‘em, right? But now you’re just using these two. What gives?”

“That, um…” Renren pawsed, his fingers curling into fists, and then releasing themselves. “I… I can’t use any of the others. I can still feel them, but I can’t- I can’t summon them.”

“You have more Personas?” Zen didn’t sound overly interested, but he had to have been, or else he wouldn’t have asked, right? Teddie was definitely getting some sense of curiosity from him, at least.

“It’s because he’s a Wild Card,” Kenny explained. He turned to Renren. “Ren-san, do you want to go back and ask your friends about this? Since they’re from the Velvet Room, they might know something about this.”

“Y-yeah, that- that sounds like a good idea.” Thankfully, they’d found a clock nearby that they could use as a shortcut back. Teddie was good at using magic like Traesto- it had been his specialty even bearfore he had Kintoki-Douji- but it was nice not to have to use it.

They could always go and explore this new floor later.

* * *

  
  


Ren hadn’t really wanted to admit that his Wild Card powers hadn’t been working properly. They were the thing that tied him to the Velvet Room, something that gave him sway when it came to puzzling out a strategy… Where Ken had experience, and Teddie a unique connection to the world of Shadows, all Ren had to his name was versatility.

And, at the moment, he didn’t even have that.

But none of them judged him for it, just took him out of the Labyrinth and to the Velvet Room, where they could ask the closest thing they had to an expert on the subject, since Igor wasn’t exactly available at the moment.

“I see… So that is what feels different.” Lavenza looked over to the table at the side of the room. “If you would sit down there, please?”

Ren did as he was told, slouching down in his seat. It was very comfortable, even if he could barely see over the table. Immediately, a number of cards were spread out in front of him. “What are these?” The first thing he noticed was that they had the Arcana on them.

“These are tarot cards. Oftentimes, humans will use them as a way to read the fates.” The residents of the Velvet Room being not quite human was something he’d never been told outright, but that he understood regardless. It was sort of like how he knew what all of his Personas could do when he first got them, some hidden instinct that was looking out for his best interest. “Hm… The Tower. How interesting…”

“The Tower?” Ken repeated, sounding as confused as Ren felt. “What does that one mean?”

“Sudden calamity.” Well. That was ominous. “But that isn’t the most important thing here. What is important is that it is not the Fool.”

The Fool. Ren’s Arcana, so much as anyone who kept changing their soul around like that could have one singular Arcana. It was the Arcana of both Arsene and Izanagi Picaro, the two that had stayed with him despite… whatever this was.

“The Fool?” Yosuke somehow sounded a bit less confused than Ken had. “Like, an idiot, or…?”

“Like someone who is best represented by the number zero. My master describes it as ‘empty, yet holding infinite potential.’” And those were definitely words that Igor would use. “It is the Arcana of the Wild Card.”

So he could say it was his Arcana. That was more relieving to hear than he’d thought it’d be.

“So, what’s it mean if the card’s changed?” Chie asked. Probably the most important question, really, even if Ren didn’t think he’d like the answer. “Does it mean he’s not a Wild Card anymore, or something?”

And that was the most terrifying thought he’d had all day. Even counting the moment when they first met Zen, and he was fairly certain he was going to shoot them.

Thankfully, Lavenza shook her head, and Ren was immediately crushed by a powerful sense of relief. “No. But it seems that something has changed…” She looked to Rise. “Would you mind sitting down for a moment?”

“...Huh? Oh, sure.” Rise took a seat next to Ren, and wasted no time in making herself comfortable. “Why’re you asking me, anyway?”

Lavenza drew a new card, this time the one in front of Rise. “The Fool… as I suspected.”

Marie blew a gum bubble. “So, could you translate for the rest of us? I don’t know what that’s even supposed to mean.”

“Our Guest is currently unable to change his Persona freely. Instead, he is limited to his own Arsene and Izanagi.” It was sort of strange, hearing the second name referred to as his own Persona. He’d only recently gotten together the materials for the fusion, and that had happened entirely on Lavenza and Marie’s request. But some part of it also felt right, and that was similarly surprising to realize. “But… the power of the Wild Card still remains, if in a changed form.”

“What do you mean?” She couldn’t be referring to the two Personas he still had access to. It wasn’t anywhere near the reach he had before, just two Personas of a singular Arcana, who allowed him to walk through fields of Mudoon without so much as a flinch, but which would quail before the forces of ice, wind, or light.

“Aside from the Personas you all have with you now, you may each equip an additional one from a shared pool as a ‘sub-Persona.’” The way she said the words, it was as if she’d heard them before, but was only now trying them out for the first time. “They won’t affect your attributes at all, but you could use some of the powers that they grant- if nowhere near the full potential they could reach.”

And there was that word again. Potential. Ren wasn’t sure why it kept coming up in regards to the Velvet Room, but it did, and he never understood just what they meant by it.

But he did, sort of, understand what Lavenza was saying this time. “But… where will those Personas come from?” The ones in his head were perfectly content to stay there, not even bothering to peek out and get a better look at what was going on.

“Well…” She tapped her chin. “Have you found any sort of… odd cards, perhaps?”

There was a quintet of blank cards hiding away in his pockets. “Right here.” And then she tapped on them, and five Personas sat in front of him. “...Thank you.”

Yosuke watched this all going on with a large amount of interest. “...Hey, can I get in on this sub-Personas thing?”

“No. This is for people who have bonded with my Guest, and who possess Personas already.”

“Aw…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, Yosuke. Better luck next time.


	8. In Which There Are Many Clocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seriously. There's a whole room full of them.
> 
> Also, Rei tries to eat something she really shouldn't.

All things considered, even with the many letdowns of how Yosuke was surrounded by people with superpowers while not having any of his own, he supposed it could be worse.

He could have been little Nanako, standing next to Rise and constantly asking what the others were doing.

“They haven’t even gotten down to the second floor yet!” She sounded annoyed, probably. “...I know. Why don’t you go talk to Yosuke-senpai. You know a whole lot more about magic and stuff than he does.” And wasn’t that just salt rubbed in the wound…

“...Okay.” And now the little girl looked disappointed, which was almost enough to make Yosuke sad by association. “Um… so, your name’s Yosuke?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” He sat himself down in a nearby chair. If one of the students wandering the halls wanted it, well, too bad. Priority went to people who could actually think.

“I’m Nanako,” She said, like he hadn’t heard it already. “Do you think my Big Bro and the others are gonna be all right?”

“I dunno.” Why was she asking him? He knew nothing about this magic stuff. “What sort of things do they do, anyway? I don’t know anything about it.”

“Well… I don’t know a lot, either,” Nanako admitted. “But I know Yukiko can make things really hot, and Teddie cools it back down again. And Big Bro can safely look right at the sun!” Okay, that was impressive, even if it sort of made Yosuke wonder how they knew that. “And if they’re hurt, they can just eat stuff, and then it gets better!”

For someone who didn’t know a lot about these people’s superpowers, she really was good at making them sound enticing. “I guess you don’t know how they do that?”

She shook her head. “Big Bro says he’s special.” And he probably did have to be, to run around like this, to be lucky enough to gain powers, to get everyone to listen to him despite his age. “And that it’s dangerous, and the Shadows make people forget things, and… he doesn’t tell me a lot. And he says we shouldn’t tell Dad any of it.”

That last bit actually made sense, when Yosuke thought about it. “I guess he wouldn’t believe you if you did. Unless Amada used his powers, or something, and if he doesn’t want him to know…” All he’d have to do was just never use his powers around the wrong people.

It really was a stroke of luck that he’d found about these things, hadn’t it? He’d been in the right place at the right time, or maybe the wrong place at the wrong time, given just how little he could do.

But it was nice to know that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t fully understand this mess. That meant a lot more to him than he’d thought it would. Even if the other was seven years old.

* * *

  
  


The first room on the second floor was full of ticking.

Ken tried to ignore it. To pretend that the sound wasn’t there, never mind how he could easily see at least six clocks ticking the moments away in perfect harmony. It was just a sound.

“This place is… really big,” Rei breathed out, stepping into the large room.

“Those clocks have to connect to somewhere, don’t they?” Ren commented, looking around. “...I wonder where they all go.”

The sound of ticking was going to follow them throughout the entire floor, Ken just knew it. The sound of the Reaper’s chains might have been less annoying.

The fact that this was because the annoyance would be rapidly replaced with mortal terror was irrelevant. ”They’ll all probably lead to different rooms, right?” Not much point in having multiple ways to connect the same two rooms together.

“So… it’s all going to be really big…” Rei deflated, her fingers catching in the bright yellow of her sweater. “And… we’ll be going for a long time, won’t we?”

Zen paused. “Rei… are you all right? If you don’t want to keep going…”

“Oh, I’m fine!” And suddenly, she’d brightened up again. After all the fights he’d had that year, Ken couldn’t help but wonder how much of that was real. If it was too much…

...Well, maybe it wouldn’t be a problem. It wasn’t like Shinjiro’s Shadow had shown up when he visited the TV World, and he was the person Ken had always thought of as most likely to have one appear. If Rei had been here for this long already, it was probably fine.

He just couldn’t fully convince himself of that yet.

“Should we get moving?” Yukiko suggested. “It looks like we have a very long way to go.”

Well. That was certainly one way to put it.

Maybe getting away from this room would be enough to stop the ticking…

Ken thought he’d had more than enough of clocks for one day.

* * *

  
  


“Hey, Ken-chan?” Rei ventured as they walked through the hallway. “I was wondering something.”

“What is it?” He didn’t wonder why she was asking him. He didn’t think any of the friends who were with him had ever not gone to him for information. Hazard of being the most experienced, he supposed. Everyone looked at him like he had all the answers.

“You’ve all got… Personas, and stuff. But you don’t use yours like everyone else.”

Oh. Right. That was a thing. That he should have expected to come up eventually.

“That’s because I was with another group before I met these guys,” He explained. “And we did things differently there. The way I summon Kala-Nemi is… something that I picked up back then.” Just with less physical guns and more casual mimicry.

“I still think that’s messed up,” Chie stated, her hands shoved into her pockets. “I mean, who would teach a kid to do that sort of thing?”

“We didn’t exactly know there were other options,” He pointed out. “...Also, our adult supervision was kind of running an apocalypse cult of three. That maybe explains it.”

Yukiko sighed. “Ken-kun, the more you tell us about Iwatodai, the more worried that makes us.”

Rei blinked. “Iwa… to…?”

“That’s the place where Senpai grew up,” Ren explained. “Teddie and I haven’t been yet, but the high school students went there before for a school trip. They never told us what happened there, though...”

_ “We didn’t need to.” _ Rise’s voice seemed more sure of that than she did of some Shadows’ weaknesses.  _ “It’s… you don’t need to worry about what happened there.” _

Ken exchanged glances with Ren and Teddie, and the three of them shrugged and got back to their exploration.

* * *

  
  


The decorations looked like food. Teddie tried not to think about that, bearcause it just made him hungry. But when he told himself not to think about how the decorations looked like food, it just acted like a reminder. Sort of like bearfore he left his world, and kept trying to forget how beary alone he was. Except that was about where he lived, and this was things that looked like they should have been edible, but probably weren’t.

Among other things, they just smelled like paint and cardboard. Not tasty at all!

Rei-chan didn’t seem to have that part figured out yet. “It all looks so… good…”

“I- I wouldn’t eat that, if I were you,” Kanji warned her. “Pretty sure it’s just made of pulp…”

“Hm… pulp…” She took a lollipop off of the wall, and took a great big bite out of it. “This pulp is chewy, with an interesting texture…” She suddenly paused, and then spat the whole thing out. “...Bleh.”

“Rei-chan, just bearcause something looks tasty, doesn’t mean you can eat it.” He’d learned that the hard way. Though, in hindsight, he probably should have realized that it didn’t smell right… His nose not working as well as it once had was no reason to make silly mistakes like that!

Chie-chan turned to Yuki-chan, confusion rolling off of her in waves. “...Is it always like this?”

Yuki-chan shook her head. “It hasn’t been this way before… Ken-kun?”

“My senpai weren’t really like this, either,” Kenny agreed. “We all had to take things seriously, especially once…” He trailed off. “...Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

Chie-chan paused. “...Wow. So this is new to you, too?”

“I- I guess it is.” But he didn’t sound very sure about that. “Still… I think they’d all like it here. Except maybe Shinjiro-san, but he’s never really been… He’s not a fan of the whole Persona thing.”

And no matter how many times Teddie heard that, it always sounded strange to him. Getting Kintoki-Douji had easily been the best thing that ever happened to him, since it got the others to ask him to come to their world. A world where there were enough things for him to never get bored, ever! But… then again, most people lived in the human world naturally, didn’t they?

“They’d have lots of fun at the festival, at least,” He found himself agreeing, despite not having met Kenny’s friends a lot. They didn’t exactly live nearby, after all. But festivals were lots of fun, so why wouldn’t they like them?

“They would!” Rei-chan agreed, the disgust at the decoration she’d tried to eat seemingly forgotten. “There’s so many things to eat!”

Kanji paused. “You… really like food, don’t you?”

“Well, not all food… I don’t like pulp.”

“That’s not a food,” Kenny stated. He seemed just as confused as everyone else. But then, that had been happening since bearfore they all got there. Since he and Renren first stumbled into Teddie’s world, almost, though it wasn’t beary common until they first found Yuki-chan’s Shadow. “Is there anything you don’t like that you’re actually meant to eat? You know, like hot sauce, or green peppers…”

“Oh, hot peppers sound tasty!”

Kanji glanced at Zen. “Hey, um… Has Rei-chan always been like this?”

“For as long as I can remember. Why? Is there a problem?”

“Um… No reason.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point, the IT still don't know everything about what Ken did in Iwatodai, despite having worked together for months. Ken prefers it that way. Lot less awkward questions about comas and near-apocalypses.
> 
> Teddie's the type of person who would probably accidentally eat wax fruit at least once. But probably only once. He's not that stupid.


	9. In Which There Is A Rabbit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They find a rabbit.
> 
> They fail to catch a rabbit.
> 
> Just another day, really.

Eventually, they all came across something that didn't seem like a Shadow. A little pink rabbit stood in the middle of the hallway, visibly sniffing around.

It had no eyes. Ren wasn’t sure why he was registering this before anything else.

“I’ve never seen a rabbit with that coloration before…” Naoto mused, as if things not making sense had any bearing on whether or not they were real.

“It’s… kinda cute, isn’t it?” Kanji asked.

Ren groaned. “It has no eyes. That’s- isn’t it just a bit…?”

“It is kinda creepy,” Chie agreed with him, and he found himself letting out a breath of relief. So it wasn’t just him, after all. “I mean, it’s not as bad as if it was a spider or something…”

Next to her, Ken shuddered. “I don’t even want to think about that…”

“Yeah! They’re beary scary!” It surprised Ren to find out how many of his friends didn’t like spiders. Sure, it wasn’t exactly an uncommon fear, but they were all so different from each other…”

“...None of you really like spiders, do you?”

“They have too many legs.”

“They’re scary!” It was nice to see that Chie and Teddie were replying in exactly the way he’d expected. It told him that he knew them well enough, if nothing else.

Ken, meanwhile… “I mean, I’m not… scared of them, really. There’s just something about them… I dunno where it comes from. It didn’t used to be this way.”

And Ren just had to trust that he was telling the truth, because he couldn’t expect to know someone’s mind better than the person themself. That was sort of the point of all of them being different people, after all. If anything, that went double for Persona Users.

Sure, he didn’t think that Ken had ever directly met his Shadow, but the point still stood. He probably wouldn’t have had Kala-Nemi otherwise.

Kanji didn’t seem particularly thrilled that no one was agreeing with him. Rei turned to him. “...I think it’s a bit cute, Kan-chan.”

“D-don’t call me that…” He mumbled, glancing away with a blush on his face. “Only Ma gets to call me that. ...But thanks.”

_ “...Are we still talking about the rabbit?” _ Rise checked, as though she’d somehow forgotten the entire topic of the conversation.  _ “It doesn’t feel dangerous. More like it’s waiting.” _

Waiting… but for what? Ren hadn’t seen a lot of activity in the Labyrinth so far. Everything new that happened seemed to have been caused by… “...Is it waiting for us?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Zen declared, stepping forward. As he did so, the rabbit started hopping away, one tile for each one that Zen stepped.

Ren got the feeling that this was going to take a while…

* * *

  
  


All things considered, Yosuke decided that Nanako and Marie were not bad company.

Nanako was a cute little thing, excited about all the food and games despite how much she worried about her Big Bro. And she did worry, often turning to the other two for reassurance.

“I-I mean, they all said that they’d be fine,” He told her for the fifth time. “And they’re the ones who’ve got all the cool powers and stuff, so…” Not that he liked the implication of being dead weight, but he had to admit that their powers probably helped.

“Yeah, you’d just slow them all down.” Marie was a blunt person. And while being constantly reminded of his own uselessness wasn’t a thing that Yosuke enjoyed, she was at least willing to tell it to him straight. Unlike Lavenza, who hid everything behind a veil of mysteriousness that had almost certainly been put there by her on purpose.

He wasn’t quite sure where Rise fit in on that scale. She was just so busy with everyone all the time, constantly making use of ‘Kanzeon.’ Because these things all had their own names.

Not that Yosuke had learned the names of anyone else’s Personas, because that just didn’t seem like a relevant thing. So what did it matter what they all called their powers?

He rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to keep reminding me.” It was one of the many things stopping him from truly enjoying this festival, along with the fact that he didn’t know how to get home. Or if he ever would get home. Or if his whole life would just become this one festival.

All things considered, it wasn’t exactly the worst place to end up, but that wasn’t saying much.

“Hey, um, Marie-san…” Nanako shuffled in place with her small container of donuts. “You know about what Big Bro and his friends do, right? Are they really strong?”

“...Huh? Well… I guess. Ken’s easily the strongest, but they’ve all got power, haven’t they?” As though it was as simple as that. Like having a Persona automatically meant becoming powerful.

Maybe it did. And if that was the case, Yosuke wanted to take it up with the manager of the universe, who had clearly been out on break for the past half year or so. Because, for him, that was when the world had started not making sense. When people began to die.

“Big Bro’s the strongest… that’s because he’s had magic the longest, right?”

“I think so? But it’s not like they’re all as strong as each other when they start out, either.” And those words made even less sense. Assuming that sense was even a thing anymore. “If it was like that, then Chie’d never catch up.”

Those words, though… Those words made sense. Because Yosuke was friends with Chie, without any sort of doubt, and Chie had spent months wondering out loud just what Yukiko could possibly have been doing, when they weren’t around.

And then, at the start of the month, Chie had stopped wondering.

Yosuke wondered how he’d failed to notice that sooner. She wasn’t exactly the most subtle person out there. “So she just… started as strong as everyone else?” How did that work?

Marie didn’t answer. Maybe she didn’t know, either. Nanako went back to snacking on her donuts.

Yosuke wondered what that idea meant for him. If, if he somehow managed to acquire powers, he’d be on the same level as everyone else.

Or maybe he’d be stronger. Or maybe he’d be left behind, because he was still dead weight.

Yosuke pushed all thoughts of powers out of his mind for the moment, and tried his absolute hardest to enjoy the festival.

* * *

  
  


In the middle of the third floor, they still had not caught the rabbit.

They would all claim that it wasn’t their fault. The thing jumped through paintings, ran down hallways, and tended to vanish the instant they let it out of their sight for more than a second.

But the fact remained that, after this long search, they still had not caught the rabbit. So instead of dealing with whatever it was, they were standing next to a table and a tiny door.

“Wasn’t there something like this in the book?” Yukiko asked, like any of them knew the answer. Ren’s biggest association with the name ‘Alice’ was as a Persona he might have been able to fuse at some point in the future. Which probably wasn’t what anyone here was looking for.

Chie crossed her arms. “You mean like some kind of potion?”

“Right. Alice drank it, and it made her become small. It said, ‘Drink me,’ on the label.”

The bottles that were currently collected on the table had no labels. Ren wasn’t sure he’d have trusted any that had been there.

Sure, from his experience, Shadows didn’t lie. But who said it had to be a Shadow to make the label? Anything could have been lurking there.

“I guess the only way to know what it is is to try it,” Ken remarked. “...Or, that’s what Minato-san would say. Kotone-san and Mitsuru-san would say something else.”

Somehow, Ren didn’t find any of that surprising. “I… maybe we shouldn’t drink strange things.”

“They don’t look dangerous, though,” Rei said, approaching the table. “Maybe just a little taste?”

Zen gave her a Look. “Rei. No.”

“Come on, just one little sip?”

“No.”

“But-”

“No.”

“Aw…” She deflated, but backed away from the little table all the same.

Chie stepped forward in her place, and Ren wasn’t surprised by this at all. “You know… if this does make us shrink, we could get in that door there.”

This was a good point. Maybe not one that the rest of them would have come up with, but it was impossible to say that the idea didn’t have merit.

“...Well, none of the stuff from Tartarus gave us worse than a stomachache…” Ken mused. “And it wasn’t even always as bad as when I eat ice cream, so…”

_ “...Should you be eating ice cream?” _

“I’m not going to stop.”

“...Well, one way to find out what it does.” With that, Chie scooped up a bottle and took a sip. “...Hey, this tastes really good! Yukiko, you should try some!”

“A-are you sure about this?” But Yukiko also took a bottle from Chie. “It’s… not bad.”

“What’s it taste like?” Ren asked, curious.

“It’s… some kind of fruit flavor. Pineapple, I think.”

Apparently, in the world of Shadows, pineapples made people shrink.

At least they got the key to the locked door they’d passed from it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know your party members have to be able to keep up once they join you, but it's the sort of thing that someone looking from the outside would probably question.
> 
> That Chie is taking after Minato in this instance is probably something to worry about.


	10. In Which The Story Finally Begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the bottom floor of the Labyrinth, there is a Queen. She has something that she's possessive of, and she clearly won't let it go without a fight.
> 
> Yosuke makes some new friends.

In the end, they chased that rabbit all the way down to the Labyrinth’s final floor.

Like before, it was just standing there, as if it was waiting for them. Ren wasn’t sure if he found that more or less concerning than the giant wrought-iron gate up ahead.

“Do you think it’ll actually let us catch it this time?” Kanji asked. They all shook their heads. “...Yeah, me neither. Still… doesn’t exactly have anywhere else to go, does it?”

Despite those words, they still did not successfully catch the rabbit. It just looked at them, as much as it could look without any eyes, and then vanished in a puff of lilac smoke.

Well. At least it hadn’t exploded like the Dice tended to. Not that Ren had seen a single Dice Shadow in this whole adventure, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t around.

“Wh-where’d it go?” Rei glanced around at the corridor within the void.

“Maybe… behind the gate?” Ren found himself suggesting.

“That sounds right,” Ken immediately agreed. “But, that gate… there’s something behind it, isn’t there?”

_ “I’m surprised you can tell,” _ Rise spoke up.  _ “But… there’s a really strong Shadow there. I don’t think you guys should go in unless you’re totally prepared for a fight.” _

As if they hadn’t been prepared for such a thing when they first descended into the Labyrinth. Never mind that it seemed battle was the only option when traversing the places where Shadows would roam. Teddie was the only one Ren knew who’d ever been even slightly reasonable, and Teddie was special in a variety of ways.

“A fight…” Zen stared straight ahead, his expression as unreadable as ever. Ren didn’t think he’d ever met someone so solidly blank, except for that one Wild Card that Ken was friends with who didn’t fully seem to understand why blood on the streets was unusual.

And honestly, he wasn’t entirely sure that counted. For all he knew, Arisato Minato could have been that way because he’d come into with the goal of being as annoying as humanly possible. It would not have been the most unusual thing he’d ever encountered.

He adjusted his glasses. “So… though that gate, then. ...If you’re all alright with that?” Everyone seemed to look to him, Ken, and Teddie to make the decisions most of the time, because they had the most experience dealing with Shadows. He’d never been sure how to convince them that it was a bad idea. At this point, he’d given up on ever figuring it out.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to go home otherwise,” Naoto agreed. Or… he supposed that was the closest he was likely to get to an agreement. No matter how many times they jumped into a TV to fight Shadows, and came away on top, it just never felt like they had enough supplies.

Admittedly, that was partially because only one of them could really visit their weapons supplier, their armor was harder to recognize once they became used to it being part of their usual clothes, and just about all of their other supplies came in some way or another from either a convenience store or Ken and Nanako’s garden, but that was besides the point.

Still, none of them disagreed with her assessment, so they all stepped forward, intent on seeing what, exactly, was behind that iron gate.

If they were lucky, it could even take them home.

* * *

  
  


Ken stepped through the gate, and immediately the senses of anticipation and familiarity he’d been feeling all day tripled. It was sort of disorienting, entering a room that he’d swear he’d never seen, and yet to feel, with an instinct that was on a level at least as deep as his Persona, if not moreso, that he’d been there before. That something big was about to happen.

Admittedly, for the last part, the giant queenlike Shadow that towered above the rest of the room was also a pretty good clue.

He very purposefully did not compare her dress to Artemisia’s. Mitsuru would kill him.

“Intruders!” The Shadow called, in a shrill voice that didn’t match her size. “Intruders in my royal court!”

This didn’t look much like a royal court. It was just a large room surrounded by dark brick walls, completely open to the sight of the void above. The coldest, most lifeless place in a Labyrinth that hadn’t had much life to begin with.

“Is… she talking to us?” Naoto asked. “She doesn’t seem like the sort of Shadow that would…”

Of course not. All of the Shadows that Ken could remember really speaking to him had looked human, at least at first. Even Ryoji hadn’t been an exception to that rule.

Teddie shrugged. “I dunno. She is the strongest Shadow here… She has some real grizzly powers!” None of them asked how he knew this. Sometimes, Teddie just knew things like that.

The queen Shadow drew herself up to her full height. “You’ve come for my treasure, have you? I won’t let you have it!”

Ren looked up. “...Treasure?”

_ “She must mean the box behind her,” _ Rise explained.  _ “There’s something about it… It’s different from the other boxes in the Labyrinth.” _ And that usually meant an important thing.

“It doesn’t matter whether you allow us to or not.” Zen stepped to the front of the group, and Ken found himself moving out of his way without knowing why. Just that it was right for him to do so. “Whatever you try, we will take it, and then we will leave this place.”

“You-” The queen’s face took on a look of shock, but it vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, her attention moving to the rest of them. “...No matter. Even if it goes against our king’s wishes, none of you will ever get out of this world!” Her… king’s wishes?

Kanji hefted his desk up into the air. “I’d like to see you try and stop us.”

“Are you threatening your queen?” A hard stare met the group, and the queen spread out her arms. “Guards! Guards, come to me!”

Immediately, Card Soldiers appeared like the ones on the floor above, this time an entire deck of faceless playing cards instead of a dozen blank cards with faces. Ken couldn’t decide which of them he found more disturbing.

_ “There’s a lot of them. Are you all ready for this?” _

He didn’t think that there was any other option.

* * *

  
  


Just when Yosuke had started getting used to being trapped in an eternal Culture Festival, something changed. Without warning, Lavenza had changed direction to head towards the Velvet Room, and since Marie and Nanako were following… he didn’t see much reason not to do the same thing.

The tent shuddered, as they approached, and rippled, and suddenly a large group of teenagers, a child, and a dog stumbled out of the Velvet Room, collapsing to the ground.

Aside from their unorthodox manner of arrival, there were many things that Yosuke found interesting about this group. First there was the dog, which looked incredibly similar to a dog that he’d seen around Inaba a few times before. Second was the fact that one of the girls in the group was very obviously a robot- she didn’t have clothes to cover it up, or anything.

Third, and probably the most important, was the little boy with brown hair and an orange jacket.

A boy who bore stunning resemblance to one of the Persona Users currently in the Labyrinth.

Nanako drew to a halt. “...Akihiko-san? Shinjiro-san? ...Big Bro?”

Oh. So Yosuke hadn’t been the only one to notice the resemblance.

“They are, and yet they are not,” Lavenza explained, as the newcomers looked around, all of them clearly disoriented. “It seems that time truly has no meaning in this place…”

One of the newcomers, a girl with deep red hair and eyes, turned to face them, and Yosuke shivered without knowing why. Had it gotten colder all of a sudden? “...Who are you, and where are we?”

“We’re from the future,” Marie stated, which was about as blunt as possible. Not that he’d expected anything else. “And this place is… It’s supposed to be his school.”

Yosuke flinched as she gestured at him. It wasn’t like he’d been asking for the attention! “Yeah, but everything’s all wrong. And we can’t get out- trust me, I’ve tried.”

“This is not truly Yasogami High,” Lavenza said. “Just a highly accurate facsimile. The people here will not speak to you. There are Labyrinths beneath these halls filled with Shadows. Even the power of the Wild Card is changed from what it should be.”

“The power of-” A boy with dark blue hair paused in the middle of speaking, before shaking his head. “...She’s right. I can’t get at most of my Personas right now.”

“Just the ones that are truly part of your soul. I’ll explain the mechanics to you later.” Lavenza turned to a pair who stood in the doorway, who possessed the same silver hair and blue clothing that she did. “...That is, if it is okay with you, sister.”

“That sounds perfectly reasonable. Though… why later, instead of now?”

“Because my guest is currently at the bottom of one of the Labyrinths with his friends, and they are in great danger. I hate to admit it, but… they will likely require your assistance.”

A girl in a pink sweater raised a hand. “Wait, can we go back to the ‘these people are from the future’ thing? I feel like we need a bit more explanation for that…”

“You’ll understand once you reach the bottom of the Labyrinth.” Yosuke had no idea if Lavenza was trying to be reassuring or not. But he was pretty sure that, if she was, it wasn’t working.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The arrival of Team Two to the Labyrinths is one of those things that nobody ever talks about, presumably because they either clear the first Labyrinth extremely quickly- most likely through the use of shortcuts that the player opens up- or an entire floor passes within the Labyrinth where their arrival is never mentioned despite your Navigator being right next to the Labyrinth's entrance.
> 
> ...Maybe she wandered off to the rooftop food court. You can Navigate and eat at the same time, right?


	11. In Which War is Declared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not literally, but that's mostly because the Queen is the only one that actually has an army.
> 
> Also, a bunch of time travelers show up, but somehow that doesn't feel like the most important thing at the moment.

There were too many cards.

They were weak, true, Ken thought a group of rookie Persona Users could have handled them without too many problems, but every time one fell, two more took its place.

The only reason he hadn’t been surrounded completely was because he was immune to Bless, and could just cast Mahama with himself as the focus point. Being a walking radius of instant death did a lot for keeping his enemies away from him.

“Are you guys all right?” He called to the others. If they weren’t worried about being surrounded by enemies they probably could have waded through the cards with just constant blasting of group spells, but they generally had working senses of self-preservation, so that probably wasn’t going to happen.

But he needed to check, because even if they could more or less keep up with him here, he still felt better being able to keep all of them healed, even if Teddie and Yukiko complained sometimes about never getting to help with anything.

“Nobody seems to be injured,” Naoto replied. “But they just keep coming…” Sukuna Hikona flew forward, and a patch of cards was swallowed by darkness.

Ren slashed a knife forward, accompanied with a burst of lightning by Izanagi Picaro, before said Persona was replaced by Arsene, casting Maeiha. “We can’t keep going like this. There’s too many of them.”

Teddie waved a hand, and another set of cards were encased in ice, proceeding to shatter with it. “We need to get past, though! But how do we do it?”

Before Ken could even get started thinking that question, a familiar voice rang out through the room.

“Mind if we give you a little help?”

In a moment, he paused. Let Kala-Nemi fade. Turned around, and tried to make sense of what he saw.

Minato was there, twirling an Evoker in his hand, but this wasn’t Minato from the last time he’d seen him. This Minato still wore the black uniform jacket from Gekkoukan High School, still carried an Evoker in his hands, still had yet to replace the sword he currently carried with the one that he would come to call Excalibur.

And it wasn’t just him. There was Mitsuru, wearing the most low-key outfit he’d ever seen her wear- not that this was saying much, when subtlety had flown out the window the minute she started dressing herself instead of letting someone else pick her outfit. There was Yukari, carrying a proper bow instead of one of the props she used while acting.

There was Shinjiro, in a coat that had been thrown out a long time ago, because it had been stained with too much blood to be salvageable. And towards the back of the group, an eleven-year-old boy in a black and orange hoodie that would eventually be too small for him.

Ken remembered when he first noticed that. At first, he’d been glad that it meant he was growing, and then it had been sad when he realized that he wouldn’t be able to wear it anymore.

The only faces missing from the crowd were Fuuka and Kotone. And between Fuuka being a Navigator, and Kotone being ill for longer during the typhoon than Minato was, those weren’t any more of a surprise than SEES showing up in the first place.

“Mi-Minato-san… Everyone.” Ken tried to smile, told himself not to question things until they were no longer in the middle of being attacked by enemies. “Do you think you could… deal with the cards for us, or…?” Maybe, if they all had something to do, they wouldn’t pause too much to question things, either.

“You can count on us,” Minato promised, firing his Evoker with altogether more showmanship than was strictly necessary- and wow, if seeing everyone’s old outfits was strange, seeing their old Personas was even weirder- and therefore reminding Ken why everyone had been happy when he proved that he had outgrown the need for one, at least until they realized that he would then have all of his Personas on call at literally any time and they didn’t necessarily trust him with that kind of power.

They still didn’t fully trust him with it. The last time he’d checked, there’d been a betting pool on how long it would take for something to accidentally catch fire.

Ken turned back to his current team. “Come on, guys, they’ll keep the soldiers busy.” Maybe it was a bit rude to run off on them like that, but manners had no place in the middle of a battlefield. Not when it was a serious fight for their lives, anyway.

Kanji paused. “...We’re not gonna question this?”

“We will, just later.” Maybe he’d even be able to figure out why he didn’t remember going through any of this before, aside from an overwhelming sense of familiarity that he now finally understood.

But that could wait until they didn’t have a literal army after them.

* * *

  
  


Wading through the crowd of cards was a lot easier when there was another team by the entrance, able to deal with all of the enemies that kept popping up as the Persona Users from Inaba worked their way to the queen on the other side. She seemed to be expecting them, casting a glare down at all of them.

“No! I will not hand over my treasure! I refuse! I won’t let you out!”

“Sounds to me like you’re just asking for a beating,” Kanji remarked, brandishing his chair as menacingly as he possibly could. Which wasn’t very. Ren supposed there was a reason that he’d moved on to desks and tables pretty much immediately when he had the choice.

Assuming, of course, that he wasn’t just picking up furniture at random and calling it a weapon. He still wasn’t sure that that wasn’t the case.

“You dare to threaten your queen!?” This was easily the biggest display of ego Ren had ever seen in a Shadow. He wasn’t sure anything would be able to top it. She lashed out, and he ducked to the side just in time to dodge the swipe of a large fan. The queen wasn’t using it quite the same way that Yukiko did- and the fan itself had nothing on Yukiko’s aside from size- but that didn’t mean that it wouldn’t hurt to be hit by it.

“Rise-san, can you tell if she has any weaknesses?” He asked.

_ “I-I’m not sure! Maybe Psy or Nuclear?” _

“Got it!” Ken called. “Kala-Nemi!” A psychokinetic rift appeared, twisting the air around the Shadow. “...I don’t think it’s that!”

“And I don’t have a Persona with Frei right now… We weren’t able to find any.” But it did figure that the thing their strongest enemy was weak to was one of the rarer elements, particularly the one they didn’t have.

Of course, if Ken wasn’t there, they wouldn’t have had Psi, either, but Ren was trying not to think about that.

“...Aigis-san has Frei. If we could get her through the crowd of cards… but she won’t want to leave Minato-san’s side.” Ren wasn’t sure if this was better or worse than not having a possible solution. They knew someone who could help, and she was on the opposite side of a battlefield.

_ “You could all just fight her together.” _ And there was a new voice, this time, a quiet one.  _ “You’re all so strong… I don’t think she stands a chance against you, Ken-kun.” _

“Th-thanks, Fuuka-san…” Ken glanced to the side. “It’d just… be easier if there was a weakness.” And if this one had one, the weakness was Frei.

Ren made a mental note to try and fuse at least one Persona with Frei the next time he visited the Velvet Room. It was starting to seem more and more like a good investment.

Several strong gusts of wind slammed into the queen, and she turned to glare at the one who had thrown them. “I told you before and I will say it again! I am the queen. My word is absolute! And even you, my king, cannot go against it!”

“I’m not sure who this ‘king’ you speak of is,” Zen stated, perfectly meeting her gaze. “But if you will not listen to our words, we will have to take that which you guard by force.” His words were followed by a punctuating bolt of lightning. “This is your last warning.”

The Shadow let out a sharp laugh. “...Oh, I see. I was mistaken. You aren’t the king at all! Just a worthless fragment left behind.”

Zen flinched away from her words, and was bowled over by a reaching hand. “Zen!” Rei called, running over to him with hands glowing with healing magic.

_ “A fragment…” _ Rise breathed out, her voice so quiet that Ren wondered if she was actually trying to project it, or if he was hearing words that had never been meant to reach his ears.  _ “What could she mean by that?” _

He wasn’t sure that it mattered. Arsene hit the queen with a splash of darkness, and then Izanagi Picaro followed up on Zen’s example by striking with a powerful bolt of lightning.

If it mattered… if her words had any importance whatsoever… they could figure it out later, along with the case of the apparent time travelers. Ren just couldn’t bring himself to care very much at the moment.

Who needed Nuclear spells, anyway? They’d deal with the queen, and then…

Then, they’d probably have a lot of questions to answer.

If they were lucky, Ken would even be able to provide some of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am fully willing to believe that most- but not all, the Reaper still exists- enemies that don't have an apparent weakness actually are weak to something, but it's not an element that's available to the current party. For all we know, the Painting Soldiers could be weak to the Water element, except we're probably not getting a new Persona User with that one any time soon.
> 
> Really, looking back, it seems sort of like the Queen of Hearts has some sort of idea of what's really going on, if not as much as she does here. But we all agree that the 'king' she was talking about is either Zen or the Clockwork God, right? It's probably not Rei.


	12. In Which The Queen is Dethroned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The defeat of the Queen of Hearts means talking about time travel. Ken does not particularly want to talk about time travel.
> 
> The time that SEES comes from isn't helping matters in the slightest.

If SEES had fought the Queen of Hearts, Ken wasn’t sure they would have been able to win. SEES, from the point of time that they had been plucked from, had no evolved Personas, no third level spells, and team cohesion that was best described as nonexistent. Or possibly with a negative number.

Sure, everything had worked out in the end, but none of them would ever protest to hearing SEES described as a dumpster fire. For a long time, they really were.

The little investigation team he and Ren had put together, on the other hand, had none of those hurdles. Besides Kala-Nemi, Amaterasu and Rokuten Maoh were more likely than not to be seen in the midst of combat. Even Chie, the newest member of the group, could use Bufudyne.

None of them were actively trying to kill each other. This was probably the most important fact of all, even if Ken planned to never, ever disclose why.

The result of these differences was that, to say the least, the Queen of Hearts was having a very, very bad day.

“I am the queen! My reign is absolute!” She’d been yelling this nonstop for the past minute or so. It was annoying. Why did none of them have Personas with Makajam?

...Right. Because they were relying on Ren to provide them with Personas, and to chart out their growth paths, and he appeared to be vehemently opposed to silence as a concept, let alone a reality. They weren’t going to have Personas with Makajam unless they begged them off of Minato, who routinely used it to make his teammates stop talking.

Maybe, just maybe, in this case going without was the lesser of two evils.

“...Was my Shadow like this?” Yukiko asked. Ken shook his head.

“No, she was a lot more…” He cast a glance at Chie. She didn’t seem to be listening in, but he decided that it still wasn’t a good idea to be completely honest. “She spent a lot of time insulting me and Ren-san for being kids, and Teddie and Koromaru for not being human, but that’s about it.” Well, aside from the constant disappointment that they weren’t Chie.

“...Oh.” Amaterasu’s next Agidyne still felt hotter than the last one had been. Ken decided not to mention it.

After all, he certainly wasn’t one to talk when it came to coping strategies.

* * *

  
  


When the Queen of Hearts finally fell, exploding into the usual shower of black goop, all of the cards that had been following her disappeared.

Literally. The entire crowd of soldiers separating SEES from the Inaba team was gone, now, and Ken found himself staring back at a past that should have been impossible. After all, he didn’t exactly remember this ever happening before.

Except that he’d known this place before ever setting foot into it. And when he considered that fact, everything suddenly made perfect sense.

“Um… I guess you probably have a lot of questions.” He forced himself to smile, tried not to think about all of the bad things that would soon be happening to the people in front of him. Shinjiro’s coma, Minato’s harem, Mitsuru losing her father… all of those were things that, to the other members of SEES, hadn’t happened yet. “So, you can… start asking now?”

Mitsuru, of course, asked the first, most obvious question. “Who are you?” Odds were, he would have gotten that answer even if he’d had the same Persona as his younger self. Unless the question was directed to the others, which was a real possibility. Mitsuru had never really been great at clear communication.

_ “It’s Ken-kun.” _ Fuuka’s voice was disbelieving.  _ “His Persona’s different, and he’s older, but it’s definitely Ken-kun.” _ He supposed that was the good thing about having Navigators. They always made sure that everyone had the important information.

“These are my friends,” He said, gesturing to the rest of his current team. “They’re Persona Users from Inaba.” He wasn’t sure how many of them knew Inaba existed at that point in time, when Kotone was the only one who’d actually visited, but he didn’t think an explanation was really necessary. “...Everyone, I’d like you to meet SEES from… let’s say September of 2009.”

Technically speaking, it could have been really early in October, but he definitely would have remembered something like that.

_ “...Let’s say?” _ Rise asked.  _ “You aren’t sure?” _

“Rise-san, if I remembered something like this happening, I would have told you.” Lack of communication had been SEES’ downfall multiple times, and it wasn’t something he really wanted to repeat. “But I’m pretty sure that they come from September.”

“That’s… surprisingly specific,” Minato remarked.

“Just because I don’t remember something doesn’t mean I can’t have a good idea of when it happened.” Shinjiro was there, which meant that the littler Ken hadn’t made the biggest mistake of his life yet. It wasn’t exactly rocket science. “It’s the month that fits best.”

If anyone asked why it was the best fit, he wasn’t sure that he’d tell them. Ren and Naoto, yes, they already knew the whole bloody story, at least to an extent that he could explain it, but the others… If anything, the ones who had partial knowledge of the situation were the ones that he wanted to talk to about it the least.

“...Shall we take a look at what she was guarding?” Zen interrupted the conversation and gestured to the chest at the back of the room. “There will be time for proper introductions later.”

That was easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one who had to give them.

“Well?” And thus, with Chie’s excitement, the tension was broken. “Open it, open it! I want to see what’s inside!” Either she was really curious about the contents of the chest, she was trying to break the tension, or she was still too enamored with her own superpowers to realize the oddity of actual time travel. Ken mostly cared about it not being the last one, but he was still kind of afraid to ask.

Zen did as she said, pushing back the lid and reaching in, and coming out with… “Is that a stuffed rabbit?” Ren asked. “It looks just like the one before, but not pink. And it has eyes.”

Kanji glanced at him. “So, nothing like the one we saw before. Cuter, though.”

Well, yes. Having eyes did a lot to add to the thing’s cuteness.

“There’s something written on the bottom of its feet,” Yukiko remarked, peering at it. “It says… Niko. ...Niko?”

“I- I think it’s telling us to smile!” Rei volunteered, though she didn’t sound entirely sure about that. “Isn’t- isn’t that nice?”

Naoto approached, as if to get a closer look. “But what would a stuffed rabbit be doing at the bottom of the Labyrinth?”

“The guardian was protecting it,” Zen replied. When Ken looked at him, his brow was furrowed, as if in concentration. “I… There’s… four guardians like this… four Labyrinths.”

The fact that this didn’t actually make things much stranger said more about the day they’d had than anything else.

* * *

  
  


They had to leave the Labyrinth eventually. Eventually, Ken would have to have a lot of conversations. Unfortunately for him, there wasn’t much reason that they couldn’t intersect.

Before they’d even gotten back through the gate, the littler Ken stopped and turned to him. “So… you’re supposed to be me?” As guarded as his tone was, Ken had the benefit of having once been him, and so he understood that the little him was mostly curious, but probably more than a little wary. And, because he’d once been the same person, it was impossible to blame him for it.

...Well. Pretty close to impossible. “I was, once. I- I’ve changed a lot since then.” As much as it was getting easier for him to summon Kala-Nemi, he figured he wouldn’t have to do so to make his point.

And that was a good thing. Because if he made his point with Kala-Nemi, then he’d be immediately faced with the question of how his Persona had stopped being Nemesis. And he was definitely very not ready for that.

He wasn’t sure he ever would be.

The little him kept staring at him, and Ken thought back, trying to figure out just what he would have thought at the time. He didn’t particularly like any of the answers he came up with, but a good amount of that was just the fact that he wasn’t really proud of who he’d been, back then.

“...You have a lot of friends.” That probably wasn’t anywhere near the questions that the other Ken had actually wanted to ask, but he supposed that they had to start somewhere.

“It happened on accident, really,” He admitted. “At first, it was just me and Ren-san, and then we fell into the other world and met Teddie…” And sure, he was aware that the fifth-grader would have absolutely no idea what he was talking about, but in some ways, that might have been a plus. “I’ll have to… give proper introductions later, and stuff.” If he was lucky, by the time he did he’d even know how to have conversations with the people from his past without saying things that he didn’t mean to.

...But probably not. While it wasn’t saying much, the SEES of his time were a lot better at healthy communication than the ones here, and… he had to admit that he’d sort of grown used to that. And now he’d have to go without, because the alternative was inevitably slipping up and revealing something about their immediate future.

He almost preferred having no idea about what was going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really, the time that SEES comes from is the best time ever to see them interact with future Ken... and the worst time possible for future Ken to be faced with.


	13. In Which Introductions Continue to be Awkward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part of the awkwardness comes from the time travel. Okay, most of it does. The rest of it is things no amount of proper temporal placement can fix.
> 
> ...Admittedly, the time travel probably doesn't help with those, either.

“Big Bro!” Ken hadn’t even had time to fully adjust being outside of the Labyrinth, having just taken his first few steps back into the bustling halls of Yasogami High, and Nanako was already there to greet him, just like when he’d come home after a long day.

He wasn’t overly surprised by it. As many things as there were to do in a big festival like this, Shadows were the kind of thing that could capture anyone’s attention. “Have you been waiting here long, Nanako?”

“N-not really…” She glanced away, just for a moment, before she turned back to him with wide eyes. “But Lavenza-chan said that you’d be in danger!”

“Did you really?” Ren asked, turning to Lavenza. She nodded.

“It was the best way for me to assure the assistance of my sister and her guest.” She sounded fairly pleased with herself. “We didn’t have time to go through the full explanation at the moment.”

Ken didn’t doubt that. While he was sure his group would have been able to retreat if they had to, returning to the fight probably wouldn’t be so easy.

“So, about those explanations…” Minato began, instantly gathering everyone’s undivided attention in the way that he always had, “Does that have something to do with why there’s two of Ken now?”

“We did say we were from the future,” Yosuke pointed out. “Isn’t that enough?”

“I think he’s more concerned about why I’m running around with a new group of Persona Users.” It wasn’t like having a Persona was in any way common, and the end of the Dark Hour had been supposed to be the end of Shadows, as well. It just hadn’t worked out that way. “Probably. I don’t… actually remember doing this the first time.”

“Figured,” Kanji said. “You’d’ve said something ‘fore now if you did.”

He definitely would have reacted, in some way or another. Probably would have blown the whole time travel secret out of the water the day he first met Ren, or, failing that, Teddie. Assuming that he would have recognized Teddie in his Shadow form.

...Then again, that wasn’t completely improbable. He had a very memorable personality. “On the bright side, this does mean we probably don’t have to worry about breaking time. So… there’s that, at least.” Aside from the fact that he had to constantly look at his past and be unable to change it. Not that he knew what he would have changed it to.

Or if he would have been able to change things anyway. He’d been a pretty stubborn kid.

“...So, are you going to introduce us to your new friends?” He supposed he couldn’t get away with not doing so. Something told him that his already having done so in the future wasn’t going to work as an excuse here.

“Um… Right. So, this is Amamiya Ren. He’s in the class below me at school. Well, this me, not… I met him after moving to Inaba. And he just… happened to have a Persona.” It sounded like a massive coincidence, but given how SEES had all managed to find each other, and even mostly went to the same school, maybe they wouldn’t think too much of it. Which was good, because Ken wasn’t even sure how he’d managed to get lucky enough to befriend another Persona User on his first day in a new town. “We’ve been working together ever since.”

“It’s nice to- um- re-meet you?” Ren sounded just as unsure as he was. Probably due to not having the benefit of actually knowing these people very well. “I mean, I haven’t met all of you, but… most of you? Ken-senpai talks about you a lot. I’m starting to think he doesn’t like it in Inaba.”

Ken’s feelings on Inaba, overall, were mixed. He liked a lot of the people there, but… There was something missing. Maybe it was just that his uncle was distant, while in Iwatodai he was always able to come home to someone who wanted him around, though the word home implied it was a consistent location and he hadn’t spent the better part of a year couch surfing.

Either way, he wasn’t particularly able to refute Ren’s claim at the moment.

“I may be missing some information,” Aigis stated, in that same clipped tone that she’d used to have, all that time ago before Mochizuki Ryoji briefly dropped in their lives, and then slipped away once again, as quickly as he came. “Why would Ken-san be living in Inaba?”

“My uncle finally got around to taking me in. After three and a half years.” He didn’t think he had to explain that he wasn’t particularly impressed with that. “This is my cousin, Dojima Nanako.”

“Hello!” Nanako chirped, hopping up onto her toes for a moment. “Big Bro talks about all of you a lot. You’ve got the same sort of magic he does, right?”

“So much as you can quantify these things…” Mitsuru sighed. “...How old is she?”

“I turned seven this month!”

“She figured a lot of it out on her own,” Ken admitted. “And I didn’t exactly ask her to come here. I don’t even know what here is.” If he had known, he would have tried his hardest to keep Nanako far away from it. “I wasn’t ready to handle it when I was eleven, I don’t exactly want anyone younger going through this.”

“What are you talking about?” His eleven-year-old self asked. “I’m doing just fine!”

“Yeah, well, hindsight…” He paused. “...I’d quote Shinjiro-san, but I don’t think I should be doing that in front of Teddie or Nanako.”

Teddie blinked. “Why not?”

“Because you’d repeat it.” It wasn’t like the bear had a filter.

“...Shinjiro, have you been swearing in front of Amada?”

“It’s easier to list the people Shinji doesn’t swear around, really…” Shinjiro, for his part, looked like he’d added an entirely new reason to the list of why he wanted to die.

“I feel like this is the wrong time to be talking about this…”

If Ken were more flippant, or more recovered from everything that had happened soon after the first time this happened, he would have pointed out that Shinjiro’s strategy of putting everything off until after his death would only work out if he actually did die. But he wasn’t, so he didn’t.

Besides. Something told him that wouldn’t make Shinjiro feel better, either.

Also, he didn’t want the little him to end up any more confused than he needed to be, even if he probably wouldn’t remember it later. And the best way to avoid that would be to just not tell anyone anything about their future.

Yes, he was aware that, with the friends he had, this probably wasn’t going to last.

“We can… discuss this later…” He hoped he was lying. He desperately hoped he was lying. “So, this is…”

“Hi! I’m Teddie!”

“...Teddie. He’s a bit excitable, but he’s really harmless.”

“...Are you certain about this?” And then there was this particular hurdle that Ken hadn’t even considered. “Something about him feels… dangerous.”

“Trust me, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.” This probably wasn’t the time to try to sell the Shadow hunting robot on the idea of friendly Shadows. That could wait until hearing the name Palladion was once more a foreign concept.

It had waited. It had gone over pretty well, all things considered. And it probably wasn’t going to happen that way again at least until Aigis had the change in perspective she’d gotten from meeting Ryoji. Best to keep Teddie’s origins a secret for now.

Not for the first time, Ken found himself happy that the bear suit had been left at home for now.

“...Is Aigis-san alright?” Yukiko asked. “She sounds sort of…”

“She doesn’t know how to people yet.” This was the tactful response. The other ones were never going to see the light of day. As it was, they barely ever saw the light of Kala-Nemi. “...Since you’ve said something, maybe you could introduce yourself?”

“Oh. All right. My name is Amagi Yukiko, and I’m the one who sets things on fire. Despite what it might look like.” For some reason, she shot Chie an odd glance as she said this.

“Naoto-kun also lights things on fire, doesn’t she?”

“She also doesn’t look a lot like she’d set things on fire…” Kanji noted. And there went the topic… It was amazing, how quickly a subject could change with enough people in the room. “...Or use lights, or lightning, or Megidola…”

Minato-san paused. “...One of you can use Megidola?” Naoto silently raised her hand, looking steadily at the floor. “...Huh. I thought it was a Wild Card thing, but…”

“Apparently not. It’s Ren-san who’s the Wild Card. Naoto-san’s just… like this.” He didn’t think he’d ever be able to come up with a better description for her than that. “She can’t use Psi or Frei, though.”

“Is… that the only thing she can’t use?” And now Junpei actually sounded nervous. Same old Junpei.

“That we know of.” It went without saying that there were probably plenty of elements that they had yet to encounter. For all they knew, Shadows on other continents could use a different set of elements altogether.

Rise paused. “I hate to interrupt this, but… would now be a good time to mention that lock in the Velvet Room that’s about to come off?”

“...It feels like you should have mentioned that a lot sooner.” Except not really. This felt just right. But Ken wasn’t sure he’d be able to explain that part if they asked. It didn’t even really make sense in his head. It just was.

Sort of like the Labyrinths themselves. Except that he didn’t like the Labyrinths. So maybe it wasn’t that great a comparison, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It really is for the best that he doesn't remember things.
> 
> And here we see the first blow dealt to Ken's relationship with his past self.


	14. In Which A Lock is Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ken talks about the future a bit. So does Lavenza. It's hard to tell who is being the right amount of careful at the moment.

The lock exploded into shards of light the second Ren and Minato stepped into the Velvet Room at the heads of their respective friend groups. Ren flinched when the shards got close to him, though they faded away before they could impact.

Minato didn’t visibly react at all. Ren hadn’t exactly talked to him a lot, he’d only visited Inaba the one time, but this seemed to be about on brand for him.

After all, the sort of people who didn’t flinch at these kinds of things were almost definitely the same sort of people who would be flippant about finding a dead body.

“That’s one gone,” Minato remarked, sounding incredibly casual about this. “But there’s still three left.”

“We know how math works, Minato-san…” The older Ken sighed, looking like he was already done with the Wild Card from the past. “Even Junpei-san could get that.”

“H-hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“When you tried helping me with my homework, you just made it worse,” The little Ken pointed out. “I had to get Minato-san to fix it.” With how annoyed his older self tended to be by Minato’s very existence, it was difficult to picture Ken asking him for help with his homework.

But then, maybe he wouldn’t have done that without Junpei’s intervention. Though Ren would have thought he’d go to someone else instead. It wasn’t like SEES had any shortage of people.

“...Was it really that bad?”

“It was pretty bad,” Minato agreed, as Junpei’s face fell.

“Still… one of the locks is gone,” Naoto said, returning them to a topic that was probably more important than Ken’s past self’s grades. “And we don’t know where these doors lead, but it’s one of the few things that could possibly be a way home.”

“It’s definitely not the gate…” Yosuke grumbled. Ren wasn’t entirely sure why he kept complaining about that. Just because that wasn’t a way home didn’t mean there weren’t others.

“Perhaps…” Zen agreed, gazing at the doors. “...This place wasn’t here before you arrived. If this is your place, then these are your doors. And the lock shattered soon after we defeated the guardian of the first Labyrinth.”

“So what you’re saying is, we only need to get to the end of three more Labyrinths.”

“I’ll start looking for more right away!” Rise declared. Ren sighed.

“I think we should all rest first,” He said. “I-I mean… We should at least eat, right? We’ve… probably missed dinner by now…” He wondered if time was passing back in Inaba. If so, were his parents worried about him? Not that dinner tended to have any sort of set time… But the others probably would have been missed by now, except for Naoto.

And possibly Ken and Nanako, but that bit didn’t need thinking about right now.

The older Ken paused. “Maybe… how long have we been here?”

It turned out that none of them had an answer for that. Which, by itself, was probably a sign that it was time to do anything other than wandering in a maze filled with Shadows. One of, apparently, four.

Ren hoped that, once they got home, nothing showed up to force them to enter the TV for at least another week. That would be nice.

* * *

  
  


In 2009, the Gekkoukan High Culture Festival had been canceled by a typhoon.

Ken hadn’t cared overly much. He still hadn’t yet gotten close enough to the others to be swept up in their excitement, or to be crushed by the weight of Junpei’s disappointment. But it had been a thing he’d taken note of, all the same.

So when he thought about it, it really wasn’t all that surprising that SEES, with the exception of Minato who was getting a crash course in the change to the Wild Card frm Lavenza, had immediately split off and vanished into the halls of faux Yasogami High. He’d sort of expected it, really, even without relying on his feelings from a past he couldn’t recall.

The Inaba group split apart, too, but most of them actually had an idea of where to go to begin with. The same couldn’t be said for SEES. The closest anyone who had come directly from Iwatodai could have to a plan was when Akihiko challenged Shinjiro to see who could eat the most takoyaki. Which had been the sort of thing that Ken didn’t need faint hints of memory to know was going to happen.

Chie had taken charge of leading the two of them to the takoyaki stand, if only so she could participate in the contest herself. Lacking any other real ideas of where to go or what to do, Ken followed them, taking care not to meet the eye of his younger self.

He wasn’t really sure what he’d do, if he was ever placed in a room with the little him and asked to carry on a conversation. They were different enough that he didn’t think anything would go well except for maybe discussion of Featherman. And he had a bit over two years worth of episodes that the other didn’t. So it would still be at least a little bit awkward.

Admittedly, spending time around the past version of Shinjiro was awkward for pretty much the same reason that talking to his past self was, but at least it didn’t come with the particular weirdness of trying to hold a conversation with someone who had his own face.

“Thought you’d be going off with your friends right about now,” Shinjiro said. He sounded sort of like he was trying to be lighthearted, but clearly wasn’t getting anything close. It… wasn’t a tone that Ken had heard from him in a very long time.

But then, that probably had a lot to do with how the Shinjiro of his time was actually willing to let himself be happy, instead of just stewing in his own guilt all the time. He hadn’t realized how drastic a change that was until he was put with people from back before it had happened. At which point it had proceeded to hit him with all the subtlety of an Eigaon to the face.

He shrugged. “They… I’m pretty sure that they’ve all got stuff they’d rather do, right now. And I can probably trust Ren-san not to show Nanako anything too…” Well, okay, the only reason he was certain Ren wouldn't try and teach Nanako knife tricks was because Ren didn’t know any knife tricks. The last time he’d tried, he lost a knife in the Samegawa River. “He’ll look out for her. Everyone will- it’s a lot like all of you would do for me.”

Except maybe they didn’t really do those things yet, because they hadn’t quite been made aware of how much he needed it. But no one questioned his words, so he assumed they got the point he was trying to make, even if they didn’t fully know where it came from.

“You could have gone with the other group,” Chie pointed out, her eyes not leaving the sign on the takoyaki stand for even a second. Ken, at this point, was starting to realize that he might have been better off just getting his food and making a run for it.

“...I think that'd just make things weird,” He admitted. “I mean, I know a lot of stuff about them that they don’t. Future relationships, college majors… even what their Personas are going to be.” And when it came to knowing people, that was usually not how things went. Knowing what someone’s Persona was before they did was just not how things were supposed to happen.

Akihiko paused. “Yeah, you used a different Persona earlier, didn’t you?”

He nodded. It still wasn’t the most comfortable topic, but… “His name’s Kala-Nemi. Nemesis… After some time, it just didn’t fit me anymore, you know? Almost everyone I know has had something like that.” Well, a majority of the Persona Users, anyway. At this point, he just had to assume that it was normal. “It made us stronger.”

“What about me?” There was a gleam of curiosity in Akihiko’s eyes. Ken supposed that it couldn’t hurt to tell him this one thing.

“Your Persona’s going to be called Caesar. He’ll change at about the same time mine does.” A bit before, actually, but they’d more or less happened as a part of the same event, anyway. “...But everyone keeps referring to you and Shinjiro-san whenever they say ‘the twins’ despite knowing an actual set of twins, so I don’t really think you’ve changed all that much.” Had people been referring to those two that way back then? He wasn’t really sure when it had started. But it made sense that it would have happened back when Akihiko was still using Polydeuces, didn’t it?

...Well, he’d already said it. No use stressing about it now.

“Caesar…” Akihiko repeated, slowly, as if he were testing the name to see how it felt. He didn’t say anything else.

Ken supposed that was a good thing. He didn’t like constantly having to worry about whatever he was supposed to say next.

* * *

  
  


After the second of the two Wild Cards involved in the incident left the Velvet Room for the time being, four beings still stood within its confines.

Marie was furiously writing, her pencil sliding across the paper as if she’d been possessed by a deity of writing, or perhaps the deceased spirit of a particularly persistent poet. Away from her, the three siblings were talking.

“So, you are from our future?” Elizabeth was perched on the edge of the desk, a wicked grin placed solidly upon her face.

“That is... correct.” Lavenza turned her gaze to the doors. “I’m not sure how much of it I should be telling you.”

“I’m sure that we can keep a secret,” Theo said, placing a hand over his heart. “You have my word that I will not misuse any information that you give me. ...We can figure something else out about Elizabeth.”

“I just want to know how my guest is doing. Theo’s, too.”

“Their contracts have been fulfilled to satisfaction, if that is what you were worried about. Soon after their Journeys, Elizabeth’s guest learned the hard way that, when you know more members of the opposite sex than can be counted on one hand, it might not be the best idea to try courting them all at once.”

“I’d like to say I find that surprising,” Elizabeth sighed. “But that unfortunately sounds like something he would do.”

“What of Miss Kotone?” Theo asked.

“She is currently happily in a relationship, though it took quite some time for her to get there. She is also currently studying psychology at the local university. Arisato-san is studying engineering.” She paused, and then, very deliberately, made another addition. “The two of them do not get along particularly well.”

For a moment, it was silent, as the implications of her words sank in.

And then, of course, the other two responded as she had expected. “Our guests have met?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe Ren should have asked for a bit more time without an incident.
> 
> The second section, in Aki's mind:  
> Ken: So, this cool thing happened to me once...  
> Aki: Do I also get to have the cool thing?  
> Ken: Yes, you get to have the cool thing.
> 
> You have no idea how long I've been waiting for that last line to drop. Absolutely none.


	15. In Which Ice Cream is Eaten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yosuke gets ice cream with some of the others.
> 
> Aigis gets a little confused.
> 
> Ken is handling things about as well as can be expected of him, really.

Sometimes, it felt like every time that Yosuke turned around, the world just grew more complicated and confusing. He’d started the morning with everything being perfectly normal and boring, and then Chie and Yukiko had brought their friends by the classroom, and everything had sort of gone downhill from there.

In all honesty, the thing he’d been least bewildered by, so far, was meeting Zen and Rei. Because sure, they’d been there longer, and had no memories, but it had been nice to find someone in this place who could actually think and carry a conversation.

Not that they couldn’t still be weird sometimes. “Um, Rei-chan… how many flavors of ice cream is that?” Also, was that one at the top stuffed with fish?

“Let’s see… There’s strawberry, mint chocolate chip, banana, cherry, cinnamon, butter pecan, cookie dough, apple, blueberry, durian, tofu, and smelt!”

So there probably was actually fish in that top one. “...Smelt?”

“It’s bittersweet!” And with that, Rei got to work demolishing her monstrosity. Yosuke hadn’t even known that half of those were ice cream flavors.

“I-I think I’ll just take your word for it…” If only because he wasn’t exactly keen on fish in ice cream. Those just didn’t seem like things that would go together. “What are you two getting?”

“I am having a vanilla cone, because Rei insisted that I eat something.” Okay, from Zen, that wasn’t actually too strange. Not that much could seem too strange anymore. Yosuke didn’t think he’d be able to tell what was normal or not for another week after this.

...Well. Assuming he remembered any of it. The older Ken didn’t seem to, after all, and he was the only hint they had as to how to get out. In this case meaning that his existence meant that the people from the past, at the very least, would eventually figure out how to go home.

Since Yosuke wasn’t from the past, this wasn’t entirely reassuring.

The little Ken was still looking over the flavors. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Don’t worry if you don’t pick the best one right away,” Rei said. “You can always get more!”

“I-I don’t think my stomach can handle more than one scoop… Hanamura-san, do you have any ideas?”

“I dunno, maybe get something you know you’ll like?” He suggested. That was what he was doing. Chocolate was good. “Or, if you don’t know, you could always ask the… older you… what sort of things he likes.” That was still really weird to think about.

“Yeah, but… he went off with Akihiko-san and Aragaki-san earlier.” The kid looked strangely uncomfortable as he said this. “I- I don’t want to get in the way of… whatever they’re doing.”

“Well… if there’s a kind of fruit you like, there’s probably an ice cream flavor for it here.” When had he started playing tour guide for a bunch of little kids?

...Right. Nanako had showed up, and they’d all been some variety of bored. It had just… seemed sort of like the natural thing to do, since Rise would probably kill him if he just ran into the Labyrinth by himself… assuming the monsters didn’t get to him first, since he didn’t have anything to fight with.

He’d tried asking Lavenza if he could have some knives, once. She’d just stared blankly, while Marie had laughed at him. He assumed that he wasn’t going to get any sort of help from her.

The little Ken turned to Rei. “...Is the apple any good?”

“I don’t know! I haven’t gotten there yet!” She’d already demolished the smelt and tofu, and was now halfway through the durian.

“I… maybe I’ll try that.”

* * *

  
  


When Ren thought about it, it really was a bit too easy to forget that SEES had a robot.

It shouldn’t have been. Aigis had spent summer break in Inaba. He’d seen her at the beach. Everyone at the summer festival had given her odd looks for wearing winter clothing.

But she hadn’t, during the summer, particularly acted like a robot. So the whole thing had sort of been able to slip away from his mind.

As it was, though, more recent events were bringing it right back to his mind, and not just because the shooting gallery now had more holes in it than the donut stand. “Aigis-san, why do you keep looking at Teddie like that?”

He had some idea, of course. Just because he didn’t look like one didn’t make it impossible for someone to tell that Teddie was a Shadow. It was just that jumping straight to that was… probably not ideal. For a variety of reasons.

“I… am not sure.” Her voice was different from how it had been in the summer, more monotonous, her words carefully measured out, as if saying the wrong thing would be enough to destroy the fabric of time itself. “But something about him feels… dangerous.”

Definitely not a good idea to tell her why that was. “Teddie? Dangerous?” To Shadows, sure, Mabufula was certainly a thing no one wanted to be on the wrong end of, and Bufudyne even less. But to Aigis? “He wouldn’t hurt a fly!”

“Are you completely certain of that?” Her gaze didn’t leave the bear in human form once.

“Well, he’s saved all of my friends lots of times. I… don’t think we’d be here without him.” If only because he was the only one who could help them all get home.

“Really? But you have Ken-san with you, and he appears to be quite capable.”

“One person can’t do everything, Aigis-san.” Besides, no matter how strong someone was, that didn’t really matter if their opponent could sense and outmaneuver anything they tried, and that was definitely what Shadow Rise had been doing. Even changing Personas around hadn’t done anything to help with that. “And there’s a lot of things Bless magic doesn’t work on.” Admittedly, Ken was just as likely to pull out Ziodyne and Psiodyne as Hamaon or Kougaon. “He… mostly just sticks to healing us, anyway.”

It was a thing Ren was pretty sure was his fault, actually. Arsene hadn’t been all that powerful, at first, and he’d needed patching up pretty often. And once he’d started getting used to things, half of the team had a native weakness to ice, so one well-aimed Mabufu could put them back quite a bit, and that needed a lot of healing, too.

But they had gotten better at fighting over time. Now, odds were Ken stuck to healing because that was what he preferred to do. But that was all detail that Aigis probably didn’t need.

“Healing is one of his strengths,” Aigis agreed. “But in our time, he does not tend to use it to full effectiveness… or much at all.”

“I mean, he’s new to… to using his Persona for you, isn’t he? He might not know he’s good at it yet.” He couldn’t say the little Ken was new to the whole thing, because he would have already known about it for something close to two years. But he wasn’t sure if Aigis knew that yet.

He definitely wasn’t supposed to let anyone in SEES know that who didn’t already. Sure, Ken had never explicitly told him to keep it a secret, but even if it hadn’t involved the future, there were some things that Ren just didn’t have to be told.

“But he does in your time?”

He shrugged. “Well, there’s definitely not much he can’t fix.”

* * *

  
  


Ken couldn’t fix the past.

He knew this. He’d understood it for a long time, put it out of mind, pretended that the thought of doing so never occurred to him. Time travel was a confusing thing, and maybe he wasn’t meant to understand it, and it had been a while since he’d even given thought to what he’d change, if he could.

And then he’d ended up in this position. So if ever there was a time to think about it again… this would be it.

“Is something wrong?” Nanako hopped up onto a seat next to him. “Your food’s getting cold.”

He’d made an attempt to eat. Gotten pretty far through it, actually, except…

Well. It was a lot easier to eat comfortably when he didn’t have a point of reference for what a relatively healthy Shinjiro would look like, and when he wasn’t thinking about Kala-Nemi, and how he’d become Kala-Nemi, and everything that the members of SEES would have to deal with in just a couple of weeks’ time.

“I-It’s fine. I’ve just got a lot to think about. It’s… not every day that you meet yourself.” And even less often when it was done in a way that didn’t involve anyone’s Shadow.

She nodded. “Do you… think the other you will like me?”

“I don’t think there’s a lot of people who wouldn’t like you.” He was more worried about it being the other way around, really. “It’s just… don’t listen to anything he says too closely, all right?”

“Why not? He’s you, isn’t he?”

“Yes, and when I was eleven, I-” No. He didn’t need to say any more than this. “There’s a lot of stuff going on for him, I don’t know how to describe it…” He wasn’t sure he’d ever lied to Nanako before. At least about something this important. “He’s not always going to be thinking clearly.”

She blinked up at him. “So… he needs help?”

That was… not inaccurate. “I’m just not sure if he’d be willing to take it.”

Nanako nodded. “So… Rise-chan and Fuuka-chan said they’d be getting ready to start looking for the next Labyrinth soon. Marie didn’t want to go tell everyone, so they sent me to do it.”

“I’ll meet up with them later, then.” Once he’d finished eating. Once he was ready to. “Have you told everyone else yet?”

She shook her head. “I’m going to go look for Akihiko-san next.”

“Well, you’ll probably find him and Shinjiro-san in the same place… try looking on the roof.”

“Okay! See you later, Big Bro!” And with that, she darted off into the crowd, like a little bolt of lightning.

So, they’d be visiting the next Labyrinth soon… He wondered what that was going to be like.

For whatever reason, when he tried to call up whatever small scraps of memory he might have had, all he could see was a wall of pink.

...It was probably nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was absolutely no chance of me cutting Rei's smelt ice cream. It's hilarious.
> 
> If tactics were a thing here, Little Ken would probably default to Full Assault, while the older one would start off under Heal/Support. You know, until they'd inevitably do something to lose their free will privileges.


End file.
